


Come As You Are

by moroder



Series: Lost Hopes and Dreams [4]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Underswap, Chara is a girl, F/M, Gen, M/M, Mostly Gen, and Frisk is a boy, queendings... do i call it that way, the characters in tags appear the most as the others appear along with the game plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-09
Updated: 2018-05-09
Packaged: 2019-05-04 05:22:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 32,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14585856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moroder/pseuds/moroder
Summary: A world where nobody knows him but he knows everyone - or at least he thinks that he does. A world where he's able to create a personal happyend or cooperate with a human named Chara, the eighth one to fall down the underground.Fate always brings him the weirdest surprises.Based on a theory that Gaster wouldn't have a character to swap with in Underswap AU + the idea that he'd end up in an alternative universe after dying.Contains a terrifying lot of references to previous fics in the 'Lost Hopes and Dreams' series, so it's strongly advised to read them beforehand.





	1. As a friend, as an old memory

**Author's Note:**

> The chapter titles are references to following songs:  
> Nirvana - Come As You Are  
> Visokosniy God - Who's Here  
> Muse - The Globalist; Starlight; Unnatural Selection  
> Mujuice - Daffodils; Return Home  
> Cara Mia Addio (Turret Opera, Portal 2)

_“a piece of monster flesh. i didn’t even feel like one. and i don’t now. more like an… accumulation of a rotten and, and presumptuous_

_being.”_

 

Words, words everywhere, inside his head, his body and outstretched hands; his late sorrows and blind rage echoing in personal log entries. He was falling, drowning in a fog cloud; he felt his face slowly being covered with something muddy, like an ocean tide. As if he was actually drowning in an ocean. He might have been drowning in his arrogance and overconfidence.

 _You’re such a snob, Dings,_ he’d been telling himself. There’s nothing beyond your feigned tranquility. You ran away because you failed to find a way to make everyone happy. Will they be able to handle it on their own? What if the location of your family’s home in relation to Snowdin is now a crucial point in allowing the human to reach the King and win over him?

This human had all chances to win. He saw it. He saw and heard everything. Now these events were enveloping him, as he was slowly but steadily sinking. They swarmed around, they enswathed his body trying to pull him inside – as if an enormous spider was producing a sticky web of possibilities and event developments, all so numerous and deadly different.

Why couldn’t he just die? Monsters turn to dust as they die of natural causes. He had as well done that, and his SOUL became dust with his body. Could this be his personal purgatory? Nobody knew what monsters went through after death. Nobody denied an afterlife; nobody really thought of that. Gaster didn’t have time to think, but now it seemed that he had received just enough of that.

* * *

 

The fall ended, although he hadn’t noticed it right away. Succumbing to oblivion and handing himself out for the time segments to tear apart, the monster didn’t see anything around. For a fair amount of time he felt like only just existing. Now, without feeling that, he lied on something very soft, keeping the fall pose: hands outstretched. The only thing connecting him to reality was extremely sharp pain somewhere under left eye: it seemed that he acquired the second crack posthumously. This whining ache and a late awareness of actual death almost made him cry.

He heard grass rustling nearby. Only then he’d turn his head and found out he was lying on a flowerbed. Opening his eyes, he saw a tiny little piece of blue sky above – the last light source remaining here. The doctor suddenly remembered where he’d seen this picture.

By the eyes of the eighth human to fall down the underworld.

The awareness of his condition has hit him with such a force that he threw himself up in the air, forgetting about his cracked eye, and stared at the yellow flowers crushed by his body. How could this happen? He was in the CORE, he is dead, damn it - he felt his body dissociating upon death. This place was surrealistically different, and the bright fragment of light up in the mountain crack could be nothing else but the sky. An afterlife... really?

The pain came back even sharper; another spasm was enough to make him whine. He didn’t hear grass rustling because of that. Seeing nothing and no one, he shuffled his feet away from the flowerbed, holding the left side of his face.

* * *

Woah, it was dark in here. The monster could see that even after having his eyes adjusted to the darkness during the fall. Even more, his left eye was almost blind; no wonder he eventually stumbled upon something and fell down onto something really resembling the Castle’s floor. Noise rose in his head, and he couldn’t hear a thin voice calling out:

“Your first time here, lost SOUL?”

Getting back up, he tried to observe the voice owner but saw no one and kept silence.

“It must be so spooky to wander around here alone. Come on, I know it is.”

A spotlight was placed in front of Gaster: must have been another sky fragment throwing a beam. A white paw stepped in the light, and then whole creature showed itself – a weird catlike monster whose face moved rapidly around its head. Some time ago the doctor heard about similar creatures, the Riverperson had even talked about them... Temmie?

“I’m not afraid, Temmie.”

Its face shivered and moved up the forehead.

“How do you know my name?”

“How? Well... heard some stuff.” Gaster wasn’t a dear listener to the Riverperson but he surely remembered that Temmies didn’t live in such places. Not anywhere with obnoxious yellow flowers.

“Heard some stuff... Okay. Let me show you a way out.”

Temmie wiggled and leaped towards his coat, clinging onto it on landing. For a second, the taller monster held his breath, but as he let it go, his SOUL was already surrounded by a circle of white dots resembling... paw prints? In any case, it wasn’t looking good for him. His adversary stood on the opposite side – the doctor must’ve dropped it; its face features changed from a foolish cat to a devilish grin.

“The only way out is death.”

With a diabolic laugh, as if willing to extend the victim’s torment, Temmie sent all the paws to his SOUL slowly. For some reason Dr Gaster has only just now wondered about why he’s got a SOUL, and he asked himself – where did it come from if it has died with him? It was too late for him to notice that the prints came all too close to him; he only managed to block half of them and felt the rest cutting into his SOUL. He clenched his teeth, hearing the other monster laughing even louder.

“Stop resisting, it won’t do you any good!” it smirked, and the doctor thought about using his fighting magic but only then he has noticed how the battle gave him no other privilege but to protect himself.

“You idiot!”, he exclaimed as loud as he could, feeling his voice fading. “Why would you destroy another monster? You won’t get my SOUL!”

The paw prints surrounded the SOUL again, and he was sure to take all of them and die—

 

Ding! And nineteen of his HP got restored. Temmie’s face twisted so much it was ready to break away.

Ding! A fireball hit the catlike monster, punching him out of Gaster’s field of view and both of them out of the battle state. Wingdings found out that he wasn’t standing but sitting on the floor, must’ve been a result of battling. When a big furry hand appeared in front of him, he looked up through the fog in his eyes, and his vision cleared at once.

“How did you get here? No monster gets inside like this...”

Such a low and familiar voice greeted him: in front of him stood King Asgore himself, smiling and giving a helping hand. For a second the monster thought he’d just returned a lot of years back in the past when the royal family lived in a different place, as the history said. Then he observed the King and suppressed an exhale of surprise: he was dressed in absolutely the same way that Toriel was – in the doctor’s previous life universe, of course. And he lacked the crown. But he looked quite optimistic, to his credit. Finally, Gaster took the hand offered and got up, still feeling the crack ache.

“Let me check something. Don’t move.”

Shivers ran down his spine; the doctor felt his SOUL once again falling into a state of readiness, though this time is was way freer than during Temmie's “battle”. At some point he thought his SOUL to be palpated, but it didn’t last long. The King shrugged, ending the battle.

“It is obvious that you are not human. But if you are a monster, how did you get inside?” he spoke worriedly.

Under the pile of unknown and shocking, Gaster gave in. Truth is often the right thing to say.

“I... don’t know”, he quacked in response. “I don’t understand. I woke up there, couple of steps ahead. Ouch... it hurts.”

Once again, sharp pain went through the crack on his face, and he slapped his hand across it in horror, feeling something viscous streaming down his fingers. Hardly blood-natured. Gripping his teeth and trying to stay silent, he noticed the expression on Asgore’s face; never has he seen such dread. The monster came closer and pressed a big pawed hand against Gaster’s left eye, but nothing happened, and the doctor didn’t feel better.

“Oh, what in the Underground is wrong? Why can’t it heal...”, the king muffled discontentedly.

“Y-you know... I don’t think it’s gonna heal anytime now...”

“Don’t be foolish. Everything can be fixed!” His tone reminded Gaster so much about the gone queen that he couldn’t hold himself from answering:

“Your majesty, it’s not as easy as you say!”

Asgore’s face gave it away: Gaster needed to stay silent.

“I see now. If you came from her, then”, he clenched his fists, “then tell her nothing’s going to return, and let it be! Quit poisoning my life!”

“Her? Whom?”, the monster stuttered. “I came from nobody...”

“Whom?! Queen Toriel, of course!”

Now Gaster’s fogged mind came a bit clear. Just a tiny bit.

“K... look, I just glanced at you and... You’re a special monster, those of your kind are usually atop of others, ruling them. And your way of dressing gives away a royal origin... That’s why I treated you as Majesty, I didn’t think that’s such a unpleasant topic for you...”

“Oh... forget it”, Asgore waved a hand still tainted with the doctor’s dark liquid. “Excuse me for not introducing myself. I am Asgore, caretaker of the Ruins. This place is not usually crowded, but it seems to have changed now.”

He chuckled. If the other monster was in a position any better, he’d smile in response, but he just didn’t have enough will to.

“Win... gdings. You can call me Dings, I kinda... got used to it.”

“Wingdings? Sounds skeleton-like”, he noticed. “Nice to meet you anyway. Let’s get home and see what we can do to your eyes.”

Asgore turned around and beckoned him in the dark. Doctor followed him, having no intention to stay in the dark and a very potential proximity to Temmie who had to be waiting for him to become alone again.

The monster had a feeling that this world wasn’t entirely his. Not the place he died and not his timeline at all – everything differed. Perhaps one of the web strings entangled him too tight to let go, and here he goes. Perhaps. That would explain Asgore and Toriel changing places for no reason.

He blinked, and tiny white pupil dots came alive in his eyesockets. Hell, even after his actual death and meeting a parallel world his exploratory spirit hasn’t left him. He increased pace to catch up with the king.

Let’s see where this is going.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Temmie's talking manner is normal, and that's okay. Its attacks are based on actual Temmie attack where it uses elongated legs; I added it to "friendliness pellets", and so it went on.


	2. Take a rest as a friend

“So you don’t remember how you ended up here?”

They passed by the corridors drowned in darkness; if not for Asgore keeping a fireball ready, it would be pitch black. But as the doctor entered the Delta Rune arc, things became clearer.

“No, I don’t”, he mumbled, examining purple walls overgrown with iny. A small monster found its place at the western wall; Gaster had never seen this exactly monster and came closer, but it quickly hid itself in the plants.

“Don’t touch it, Dings”, a voice came from behind his back, and he turned around. Asgore shrugged with a smile. “These monsters are very timid.”

 _Strange. In the CORE, they were nothing but combatant,_ Gaster thought with a frown. _Yes. I’m absolutely sure to be in a different place._

Small puzzles of the Ruins reminded him of home; the only difference were the notes to every single puzzle: for example, a request from the caretaker himself to press this very switch. These switches, on the other side, were placed so low that Gaster came up with several questions to ask but he was too cautious. What if he said something like the majesty title?

Though something else alerted him as well. Passing by the spider bakery sale, Asgore greeted someone in the corner of a room, and the monster noticed a ghost – a real one and very much alike with one of Gaster’s neighbors from Waterfall.

“Wingdings, meet Blooky. My good old neighbor.”

Then Gaster looked closer. It actually didn’t look that much like Blooky from Waterfall who composed spooky music that sent shivers down one’s spine; one of its eyes was closed, and his overall appearance was... off? He was in loss of words to describe it and just had a feeling that the ghost was different.

“Blooky from Napstablook?”, he asked cautiously, and the transparent monster’s face twisted; the doctor didn’t manage to say anything else before it vanished into air.

“No, his name is not Napstablook. But he likes the shortened form more”, Asgore announced, touching his shoulder. “Why would you suddenly consider that this is his name?”

“I... have no idea... it just popped up in my head.” It was the only way to defend. “This name associates... with ghosts... for me.”

Guardian of the Ruins shook his head, and by his sixth feeling Gaster knew: he went too far once again.

“You’ve got an interesting amnesia, my friend. It seems that you can’t remember anything before getting here, but you know your surroundings to a certain degree. Upside down, though.”

“It’s you who’s upside down”, he almost answered. However Asgore was good in describing his “amnesia” situation: already three monsters known to Gaster turned out to be their counterparts.

* * *

Generally, excluding the non-Blooky incident and falling down into the red leaves room, their way home went well. Doctor slowly adjusted himself to cracked violet walls and small monsters, all too shy and polite – though he too used to be extremely polite towards the King. A mouse found its place here as well with a slab of cheese stuck to the table. The main thing was Home, reminding him too much of the one he attended in his previous life, taking an elevator down from the CORE.

The only difference was the colors around: certainly more than grey and yellow. He couldn’t remember the furniture but he was sure: Home is an exact copy of the King’s house – _his_ King’s.

As soon as they’ve entered Home, Asgore sent him to the table and hurried into a corridor, then turned back and ran through the living room. During that, the thin monster was sitting in one of the big chairs and looking around. A book was left open on the table, showing a black and white illustration all dappled with colorful stripes; taking a closer look, the doctor found them out to be children sketches on top of a human village map, according to the notes.

“Okay, not much to treat one’s injuries, but here we are”, he heard Asgore breathing hard somewhere from the kitchen; then he finally came carrying a bunch of boxes, bottles and cotton pads, threw all of them at the table, moved the second chair closer and sat in front of Gaster. “Bring this unlucky face up here.”

It’s worth saying that the doctor had never seen him doing any medical treatment. Dreemurrs were able to use magic to deal with small scratches, and so they didn’t need to treat them anyhow; but Asgore somehow had enough if not too much equipment for doing that. As the King moved a cotton pad moistened with iodine closer to his eye, Gaster prepared his teeth, but he didn’t need to grit them: he didn’t feel anything at all, and antiseptic didn’t seem to work.

“Is there any curse you’re silent about?”, the former King shook his hands and put the cotton aside. “What’s wrong with your cracks? Or... wait. Do you remember how exactly they appeared on your face?”

“No”, Gaster lied: it certainly wasn’t time for truth. Asgore took a deep breath and took out the bandages.

* * *

In the end, it all came down to the thin monster drinking tea even though having his face all bandaged. Pain in his eyesocket was not sharp but dull now; sometimes he touched the bandage with fingertips and felt the cheesecloth sinking into black. The main purpose of bandaging was keeping the crack’s edges together; it was the only thing Asgore could help with. He sat by Gaster’s side wearing glasses and reading the colored book, glancing at his new companion from time to time.

“Pardon me, but... why do you have such a vast variety of curing items?”, Gaster asked in a low voice after another sip of tea. “You can use curing magic, so... what’s all that for?”

The guardian was silent for a while. The question seemed to have triggered some unwanted memories in his mind.

“You... you do remember our history, right? The story of monsters getting imprisoned under Mountain Ebott?”

“I remember how your children died, your m— Asgore.”

“True”, an ominous shadow lay upon his face. Wingdings has already seen it too: during the battles with fallen children. “However ashamed I’ve been, I’ve left Toriel, went where my feel led me... Six humans have falled down since. They were living with me for some time, but everyone left. Everyone had to move on for some reason. And nobody returned.”

“They’ve reached their goal”, Gaster said into void, and the other monster shook his head.

“They’ve reached their death, I’m sure of that. Outside of Ruins, everything belongs to the Queen, and she’d get them out of the ground.”

“What if they... got lucky, for example?”

“How would they get lucky? By defeating Toriel? Don’t make me laugh, Dings.”

He turned the page and tucked his nose back into his book. The doctor shrugged, but he still wasn’t satisfied.

“You haven’t told me why-“

“Oh, the medicine? How do I put this... One of the last humans was incredibly kind. After I gave them home, they were running around the Ruins trying to find every single monster they hurt. Then they asked to fing necessary herbs, bandages... they carried a bottle of iodine in their apron pocket. They said they didn’t want to hurt anyone but they realized it too late, so they were trying to help.”

Asgore turned away and sniffled.

“They treated the monsters’ injuries and bandaged them as they could, and then the monsters were coming to me, and I... I cured them the correct way.”

“I’m sorry”, the doctor muttered, “I didn’t think it would be so... unpleasant to remember.”

“Unpleasant... I couldn’t save a single kid – that’s unpleasant.”

He shut the book, and Gaster flinched. His bandage moved, half-opening the left eye.

“I have no right to make any mistakes now. If the worst is in progress – and that’s exactly my thoughts – then the monsters have six human SOULs. One more SOUL will end everything. No human that falls down into the Ruins will leave.”

The doctor quietly noted how terrifying the former King could sound sometimes. Changing places with the Queen, he had also adopted quite a few traits of her personality.

“Alright. The fact of you getting here is not connected to any humans, so let’s not talk about this anymore.” He took off his glasses, put the book aside and stood up from the table. “You need to have a good sleep.”

“R-really? Why?”

“Because sleep is the best remedy. Perhaps you’ll actually get better.”

* * *

Gaster didn’t remember the process of being put into a bed one third larger than his height, the light going out and him being left alone in the dark. He knew though that he lay for several hours desperately trying to fall asleep.

He was absolutely lost. There seemed to be a way out of the Ruins, if humans could leave the place. On the other hand, even if there was an exit, he hesitated to leave Asgore alone. If from the very beginning this place existed as a mess, what could await further outside of the Ruins? No way, he decided, he’ll stay here in the meantime. At the end, the former king likes his company... doesn’t he?

With a calming thought, the sweater-wearing monster faced the wall and curled up.


	3. The choice is yours

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gaster's magic is pure headcanons. It's mentioned in "codename: ASTER" and "Black Cape" several times.

He didn’t sleep well. Every night he spent in the cozy Ruins home, he saw the most unnerving dreams. Though he knew exactly what he saw: the void. There was nothing in it but the cold and loudest silence in which he wandered for unknown amounts of time before getting here. He thought it to be a return to reality; the universe in which he drank tea with the former king and shuffled his feet around violet corridors in search of monsters – this universe would be the dream he fell into.

Then other storylines appeared: those ones that haven’t managed to entangle him. Again and again the monster watched different people dying in different situations, but never did he get to see what happens after the human SOUL gathering mission succeeds. Yes, the void had once thrown into him a version where a human stood on Mountain Ebott with other monsters, but nothing after that. At those times, he was waking up screaming, and had the house owner checking in to ask if Gaster was alright.

As the doctor suggested, Asgore felt busy with him. There wasn’t a day without him trying to heal the crack on Gaster’s face, although as time passed it stopped oozing black liquid and switched to a passive tumor state. He drank tea with him after the sleepless nights; the taste reminded about the real world, but the monster knew it just wasn’t the same. Caretaker of the Ruins asked him about his past, hoping that it would help him remember anything, but nothing helped – at least Asgore thought it didn’t. The doctor told him nothing about the outer world, worrying that everything had gone askew there as well; non-Blooky encounter proved that. Wingdings’ emergence staggered the former king’s calm grey lifestyle, and he himself noticed the black and white monster transform the world around.

For a personal purgatory, this life was bearable enough.

* * *

The third week of Gaster’s holiday in Ruins went along; he entered the local monsters' trust by that time and didn’t scare them. During the last few days he gained a habit of wandering away from home and reading alone – the time he spent working in closed space enhanced his introvert nature. Along with fear of saying something unwanted and ruin his image of a traumatized vagabond, introversion was the second reason he often couldn’t keep a conversation going and nodded or hummed in attest while Asgore talked about something.

Today, he has found himself a place in one of the six trap rooms where one would need to find a lever to pass through. Two of them contained monsters, and third had non-Blooky by the door; he stayed in the fourth room where a faded red ribbon lay on the ground. He shoved it into his coat pockets almost instantly. Nothing was actually happening to him, as usual: no monsters often passed through here, and if anyone did, they’ve already found a place in other rooms. Gaster had reached the chapter about Royal Guard and recruiting when something bizarre happened.

He heard something falling into the room next trap. Welp, another monster, he thought. Then – less than a minute later – this ‘something’ stood in front of him and observed him carefully. The creature’s red eyes and their green and yellow sweater pierced into the monster’s SOUL that consisted of memories only: the image of a child in dying prince’s hands and a bright red SOUL, glowing intoxicatingly in the place where Asriel turned to dust.

He sat still, gaze up from the book and staring at the human a couple of feet away. An obscure and sweaty feeling entangled him; his hands dug into coat pockets and fetched the faded ribbon out. The human looked at the object in his hands curiously; then Gaster handed it to them, silently praying them to take it.

“For me?”, the child wondered.

Not hearing an answer, they took the ribbon cautiously from a holed palm; the monster made no movement and eyed the human without blinking. They meddled with the little red object, then gathered their hair in a small ponytail and tied it with the ribbon. According to how fast the human did it, Wingdings concluded the object to be familiar to humans and not to be a part of the underground world. The child, now neater-looking, smiled at him with all their twenty-something teeth.

“Thank you, monster!”, they exclaimed and shook Gaster’s still outstretched hand; then they turned around and ran back up to the puzzle room. He remained still, holding the book in his knees, and one single question prevailed in his head.

_W h a t ?_

* * *

Several minutes passed in silence; even the air around seemed to be buzzing with it. Then the monster slowly closed his book, tightened his grip on it – and disappeared. His teleportation ability worked poorly, comparing to his younger brother, but he only used it in alarming situations. This one matched the description perfectly.

A human. Seventh goddamn human. Gaster still felt the tiny handshake on his fingers. He remembered the destiny of the seventh human to fall in the underground in his timeline. Toriel should’ve saved him from an attack, and Asgore gained her role in this case; then he would leave the human and give them a mobile phone, and then dart off...

To buy groceries. Because... because of a cinnamon-butterscotch pie. Right on front of the doctor, in the oven.

He jerked himself from a post-teleporting stupor and felt someone staring at him.

“Wingdings?”

Oh. He never told the caretaker about his magic. At least teleportation. Slowly turning around, he saw Asgore with a puzzled expression on his face and cooking gloves on his hands. Why on Earth would he be so damn lucky to teleport in this exact time and location?

“You pass through without a noise”, the former king noticed, watching him cautiously. The monster felt himself being actually lucky; he would’ve teleported into the time period when Asgore was present at the kitchen.

“I’m dexterous”, he answered at a gulp.

“Hey, okay, it’s not important. I’ve got a surprise for you.”

Gaster hated surprises, moreover in his current position, so he shrank.

“Another human fell down. Can you imagine? They’re still a child.”

“They’re all children”, the monster muttered, and his friend luckily didn’t catch that.

“My last chance, Dings. To save at least someone. And you’re going to help me in this.”

His tone offered no alternatives. Now the doctor finally made sure that the king’s temper changed with his role in timeline. For a moment, one thought flashed in his mind: perhaps, somewhere outside there’s his counterpart, the monster he has replaced in this location.

“Asgore... one question.”  
“Sure, my friend.”  
“Who... is the Royal Scientist now?”

 _Alphys, Alphys, please, let it be Alphys,_ Wingdings repeated in his mind, _let this one fact be stable and unchanged here._ The guardian shook his head with an undefined expression.

“I honestly don’t know”, he admitted. “The last Royal Scientist disappeared shortly before my children died, and he... or she? They weren't often seen in public, so... I can’t remember their name now. And after my departure I have no idea about the situation.”

“Disappeared...”

There was no other answer he was expecting to hear, honestly. Gaster himself already forgot his predecessor in the scientific matters. On the other hand, he found out nothing that would lessen his worries; he still didn’t know if Alphys took his place and who was the scientist so rarely seen in public. If not counting the timeline, the description resembled Gaster himself. He rarely reported something to the queen, and if Asgore took her place here, then it would be only logical to suppose...

His thoughts were interrupted by a heavy clawed hand on his shoulder.

“Alright. I’ll phone the human, you stay here and watch the pie. I’ll be right back.”

The monster nodded without facing him, and the house owner disappeared. Standing in front of the oven, Gaster watched the dough peacefully baking. His thoughts slowly switched towards the human child from Ruins.

Such a familiar face. He had a feeling that this very child had died along with prince Asriel; he rarely saw that girl without need. Could it be that... they switched places with the eighth human? Any other time and place, and Wingdings would doubt his sanity, but right now it was the least concerning thing.

Deep in thought, he didn’t notice the pie smell changing; only after glancing at it, he exclaimed something obscene and dashed towards the oven. He didn’t know how to remove the fireball – it was not his magic. So he did the only thing he could: he grabbed the pie plate and called out for help. The Ruins’ caretaker’s name, to be precise.

 

To his luck, the monster in need was already at home, followed by his little guest. He was showing the human their room, and after hearing the yelling, Asgore vanished and left the human to observe their new living place. At the kitchen, however, he saw something he didn’t quite expect: holding the burning hot plate in one hand, Gaster tried to surround the flame by some white substance with his other hand. Seeing the host, he sighed with relief and put the pie down on the oven; the fireball disappeared along with white barrier.

“Sorry, I... it kinda got out of my control”, the doctor mumbled, but Asgore didn’t even try to blame him.

“Oh come on, that’s my fault. Didn’t have to leave my magic unattended. By the way, what was that you did to fire?”

“White stuff? Oh, that’s... protection magic. I’m not used to applying it nowadays though.”

“That’s no problem. The main thing is that I didn’t have to look for the human. Can you imagine that she went through on her own to my – to _our_ home! All scratched and disheveled... Oh, kids!”

Wingdings shivered at the human’s frequent mentions.

“Where’s she now?”  
“I led her to the kids’ room. Let her rest, she’s covered quite a distance today... We can handle the pie later.”

* * *

Few hours later, when the evening came by the almost static clock of this place, the child woke up. The house was awfully quiet before that; no incidents happened and everyone was occupied with their little business – the former king, for example, sat in his chair reading some ancient book of his. The only motion Gaster has seen was taking a slice of pie to the kid’s room, but Asgore did that a long time ago, and the last two or three hours passed in complete motionlessness and silence. The doctor didn’t like this calm, waiting for the storm to come any second.

Instead of a storm, little feet tapping on the wooden floor could be heard in the corridor. Sleepy and even more shaggy than before, the human ran to the kitchen with an empty plate in her hands; a bag behind her back looked almost empty. Then she returned to the living room and approached Gaster.

“Hi! So you live here?” The doctor nodded cautiously, glancing at Asgore; the boss monster smiled and hid behind a book. “Thanks for the ribbon... again. My name is Chara.”

The human stretched her hand out, and the monster shook it, almost covering it with his palm.

“Dings... nice to meet you, Chara.”

“And I wondered whether I should introduce you or not”, the caretaker chuckled. “Did you sleep well, my child?”

“Yep. Your beds here are very soft”, the girl stretched her back and yawned, and Asgore laughed again.

“Oh, Chara... You have no idea how happy I am that you got here. I want to tell and show you so much! When you were asleep, I created a curriculum for your education. You probably won’t believe that, but I’ve always wanted to be a teacher.”

“That ain’t so unbelievable”, Gaster muttered and received a glare.

“Anyway! That’ll wait. Did you want anything, my child?”

Chara put her hands behind her back and averted her gaze. Both monsters became a bit nervous.

“When... can I go home?”, she asked silently, and Asgore smiled in disbelief.

“H-home?.. But this is... your home, Chara. Maybe”, he turned a couple of pages in the book, “maybe you want to hear something exciting? I’m reading a book called “72 Uses for Snails”. Want to listen?”

The girl shook her head. A feeling of déjà vu couldn’t leave Gaster: he saw the human in a blue sweater asking Toriel how to exit the Ruins and find the way out. Remembering this, he missed the moment when Asgore stood up and left in a hurry, leaving the child in the middle of the room. She looked at the remaining monster, ambushed.

“Where... did he go?” The voice sounded almost crying. “I just... wanted...”

Suddenly, a bunch of events of the best ending streamed in Wingdings’ head – from the very beginning till Mountain Ebott exit. They flew past him so fast he only got one of them left inside – the most important one. He bent over to the human and whispered:

“Chara. You have to leave.”

“But... I can only head to... the exit”, she muttered in response. The doctor nodded.

“Go downstairs. Asgore is going to destroy the exit from the Ruins, and you won’t get anywhere.”

“Destroy it?! But why?”, Chara yelled in despair, and disbelief glimpsed in her eyes. “I just wanna go home... I didn’t even hope to get here!”

_“Chara.”_

Oh, how much Gaster wanted to tell her! How strong was his desire to smother her with all the information eating his SOUL away, and the SOUL wasn’t even fully present – only memories. He had to give the human a target, an advice... What could he wish her when there was such a _mess_ expecting her outside?

He placed a holed hand on the girl’s shoulder, the other ruffling her hair slightly.

“Chara. Stay determined. Whatever happens, your fate depends on you truly.”

The child glanced at him with distrust, slowly shifting into a powerful sickening feeling – Chara was literally _emitting_ Determination’s red flames. She nodded, smiled as wide as she could and darted off. The doctor watched her going, not really understanding what he just did.

* * *

Only as heavy footsteps echoed at the stairs, it hit him: this is the end.

Gaster was still at the table, reading a book about the kingdom system – trying to distract himself, he found out that the underground had other cases of matriarchy. He heard Asgore going straight to him and didn’t dare to lift his gaze, trying to look as calm as ever possible.

_“She left.”_

Then he glanced at the former king. He smiled, but his smile was saturated with sorrow, as if he was almost ready to cry. Wingdings shrank on his chair.

“I couldn’t save her, Dings. I sent seven humans to meet their fate. What kind of a parent am I?” He fell into his chair and buried his face in hands. “Something’s going to happen now. My heart’s so unstill...”

“Asgore”, the monster squeaked, “didn’t you tell her to go and not turn back? _What did you expect?”_

At the same moment Gaster felt sorry about everything he said from the beginning. Caretaker of the Ruins stared at him with red eyes but with such a gaze that Gaster couldn’t move an inch and froze, not blinking.

“How do you know that? You’ve heard us and you didn’t stop me? Wingdings, you... you promised we’d... no humans... _Wingdings!”_

“Sorry”, he pressed out even softer, not mentioning that he promised nothing.

“What, _“sorry”?!_ You- from the very beginning you behaved so wrong. You didn’t say all you knew, you silenced it, and now... Was it _you_ who told Chara to leave?”

“Asgore...”

“You’re a rock on which we all split... _What’s_ wrong with you? Tell me already! There’s nothing left to lose, it’s the end – all seven humans are destined to die!”

_**“Asgore!”** _

Gaster sprang from the chair and entered a determined stance in front of him, clenching fists so that his knuckles crunched. His left eye, the more healthy-looking one, burned with a dim white color. As he remembered, this happened when he was downright angry – or thrilled.

“Look. Yes, that’s right, I never told you anything about myself just because you wouldn’t believe that nonsense. I’m serious! But if you wish, I’ll do just that.”

He counted on these words to frighten the former king, but he only frowned more. That meant the end once and for all.

“My name is Wingdings Gaster. I died about a month ago – can’t say for sure, I stopped counting. I lived under the mountain, I worked here; I was the Royal Scientist. And that was a _completely different_ timeline, Asgore. Imagine Toriel escaping to Ruins after you’ve declared a war. That would be a complete opposition to what’s happening here, but I _lived_ there, it was a _true_ realm for me. After my death I somehow ended up here, right at the place where you found me – the place all humans fell down to. I know exactly what’ll happen to the last human and how to help her, and most importantly – I know for dear damn sure that she’s _not going to die_. And I... I don’t know, perhaps I have to follow and look after her... even though she’s incredibly independent for her age.”

The scientist fell silent, having already said too much. Asgore still watched him carefully, and his gut twisted even more.

“Gaster, you say. _Gaster.”_ He was almost chewing up this name, whispering it slowly. “ ** _Gaster._** I do not believe **_a single word_** you say.”

“That’s not a surprise”, he smiled, frightened.

“All of you are leaving... even the monster who got there by no means ( _I explained the means!_ Wingdings inserted) is leaving me now. But... you know _what?”_

The monster took a step back, preparing to run.

“Go. Hit the road.  _Do it_ before I kill you!”

He understood in analytical sense that Asgore with Toriel’s temper could easily do what he said; however some part of him still hoped the conflict would die. But as the former king raised his hand and lit a fireball in the air, Gaster chose not to lose time.

Again, everything came to dark. He saw a timeline fragment the hid from him: Chara promised Asgore to not come back and he hugged her as goodbye. And that was all – the picture melted into the void, leaving him alone.

* * *

Until a snowball hit him in the head.


	4. Black spots on me

“Your majesty! Your majesty, there’s a _disaster!_ ”

She runs very fast, as fast as her short legs can allow her. Just out of trance, trying desperately to get back into the real world, rewinding the message in her head. It had a highly sobering effect.

The king slowly turns to see Alphys – small, out of breath and lacking a labcoat. Somehow he doesn’t need a lot of thought to understand what happened.

“He’s... he’s _dead_ , he _fell down!_  Doctor Dings fell down! So unexpectedly!..”

For a very, very long time he is silent, and only Alphys’ choked sobs can be heard. Only after they soften and calm down, Asgore utters:

“Not... that unexpected.”

“What?”

“He spoke about it... yesterday. That he was perhaps destined to die.”

“W... _why?_ You knew everything, your majesty? And did nothing?!” Her eyes widen in shock.

“You talk as if you lack the knowledge, Alphys. It is impossible to stop doctor Gaster when he is up to something.”

She wants to object that, but then she understands: the king is right. No one would’ve been able to save the restive scientist walking miles and miles towards his death.

“How did you find out about his death?”  
“It’s, it’s a record... down here”, she mutters, drawing out her recording device, pressing buttons; hasteless speech pours out of the speaker.

_alphys. alphys, it’s me, sans. there’s... some crap happened. everything goes south._

**_[click]_ **

_bah, damn me... doctor gaster is dead. i couldn’t save him. don’t know, don’t want to remember... never look for him anytime in the future. alphys, you hear me? alphys, alphys..._

**_[click]_ **

_contact your mother. please do contact her, i beg you. tell her you’re alright. then run the starting mechanisms of the core, standard program. i set everything up, it’s all good now. it should work. it’s gonna be alright, alphys... don’t lose hope. don’t lose- **[click]** -lose-lose---_

“Sorry, it’s stuttering sometimes”, Alphys blushes, tinkers around with the recorder, and it comes alive again after a while.

_...don’t lose hope. you can do this, you can do all this. without me. i can’t carry on like that. i have to return to my little bro, it’s impossible to leave him alone for so long..._

**_[click]_ **

“That’s all... I think. So, I—“

**_[click]_ **

**_[click][click]_ **

_alphys. forget about his section. just. forget. cut it off, isolate the control zone entrance, let it be inaccessible forever. get rid of all the password papers. you’re the only monster with full core access now. you don’t need those papers._

_hang in there._

* * *

After enclosed space of the Ruins the frosty air felt especially fresh. The snowy trees, snowdrifts and icy walkways... doctor Gaster hadn’t visited Snowdin for a long time but it was impossible to forget the landscape.

Another snowball flew out of the snow lump a dozen of feet away from him; before it would reach the target, it hit a piece of white magic matter in the air. Then the ambusher moved up from his cover.

“Oi! Why are you standing there?”, he shouted in a high voice; only the top of his head could be seen from behind his shelter. “I’m training here, move over, please.”

The monster turned around: behind him, a circle-shaped colored plate was hung, striped with aim lines. White spots were splattered all across it, and most of them were placed in the center.

“Impressed?”, a proud voice followed. “Soon the head of the Royal Guard will see how far I’ve gone! Soon I will patrol Snowdin with the dog unit!”

 _Patrol Snowdin?.._ Something similar caught Gaster’s attention in his own timeline, now long ago... Of course, he was so surprised to see Papyrus, such a young monster yet, choosing a dangerous job like the Royal Guard. He turned to see the talking one, expecting to see a monster of his height, but...

“Will you move aside? I’m training here.”

The snowball thrower exited his shelter and straightened up before him – although he could only reach the doctor’s waistline. Putting his hands to the sides and entering a confident pose, he looked up straight into Gaster’s face – at least trying to, as the monster’s face, double-cracked, looked at least terrifying.

“Okay, _fine!_ I’ll take a break then. Give you a minute of my time.”

Wingdings watched the small monster in silence; his gaze jumped from the blue shawl on his neck to his high boots, and he barely held himself from chuckling.

“And what’s... _your name?”,_  he managed to press out, trying to keep a serious face. The skeleton set his hands akimbo, and this gesture sent his shawl flying.

 _“The Great Sans,_ the future member of the Royal Guard!”

* * *

It turned out that Gaster hasn’t exactly teleported where the human exited the Ruins; he just wanted to move outside to stay out of the line of fire. So he had no idea where Chara could be now and was it worth worrying about her condition. One thing he could stop thinking about was that the mystery of the second, more important pair of monsters, unraveled.

Sans didn’t look much different from his 'normal' version; he was even dressed in a similar color scheme, but his appearance reminded the doctor of another skeleton that called his outfit “a battle body”. Gaster couldn’t predict neither adult Papyrus’ nor young Sans’ behaviors, so he had no idea whether he could interfere and talk about anything to them.

 _“You’ve already interfered enough”,_ he said to himself, _“you can’t take that back, so proceed.”_

Well then.

“And what’s your name, training meddler?” The small monster still stood with pride in his posture and glanced at his opponent. The other monster didn’t hurry to answer.

“Dings.”  
“A-ha! Here comes the time for you to see my special attack: _triple direct hit!!”_

Turning on his heels, Sans hid behind the snowdrift and shuffled something. Gaster didn’t quite understand the connection between his name and a triple hit, but moved back just in case. Just as he did so, three white shells flew past him in impossible speed and hit the target, sticking out of its center. Only then the monster saw them to be three white bones; he noted himself to be lucky to stay out of their way.

“Great, isn’t it? I never miss!”, Sans exclaimed, already out of his shelter. “ _No_ human can pass me by!.. me and my traps, that’s it. They’re half of my success!”

“Humans, by the way”, the doctor inserted thoughtfully. “Did anyone pass here?”

“N... no.” The small skeleton lost the spark of happiness in his eyes. “But it’s okay! _No one_ will hide from the Great Sans!”

Gaster’s imagination painted him a wild picture of the little monster’s excitement over hearing about a human being. Thinking over the purpose of telling so, he didn’t notice Sans watching him carefully and waiting for the dialogue to continue.

“Yeah, there’s a reason I’m asking. _Something_ passed me by... looked like a human to me.” He cautiously looked at the skeleton, seeing his eyes lighten up again and his smile seemingly widen even more.

“Really? A truly human being?”

“I don’t know. They didn’t _feel like a monster_ to me”, Wingdings shrugged. “So I though them to-“

“You’re absolutely right! We need to check it no matter what!!”, Sans yelled with a genuine delight. “Come along, show me!”

“Show you what?” the monster asked.

“Where you’ve seen the human! Where they passed and what they left behind! **No time** to lose!!”

He grabbed the tall monster’s hand – or, better saying, the hole in his hand – and ran so fast that Gaster was astonished by his incredible eagerness. In this timeline Sans didn’t seem to be able to teleport anywhere, but that didn’t distress him, along with his comparatively short legs: he was a good runner.

* * *

_Portable personal log, codename: ASTER_

_Date:[not set]_

 

what is it for?

i ran away from them. from responsibility, from my own brother. he keeps asking why i’m having nightmares. why. why. stop asking me.

alphys contacted me last week. asked if i was alright. alphys... alphys is the royal scientist now. could be me. why? why such price for it?

i lied to everyone, alphys, papyrus. even myself because i’m now recording all this.

can’t even try to do something. can’t get him back. we all miss him, it’s true.

but even so.

my actions will amount to nothing.

forgive me

forgive

me

please _please forgive me i’m going to hell_

* * *

“Hey, look! That’s my elder brother!”

They’ve almost reached the crossroad with an inventory box in the corner of it when Sans stopped and began waving his hand to someone on the distance, shouting loudly. Squinting, Wingdings noticed two figures; he recognized the first, small one, but the second... Sans pulled his hand, and they approached, giving a chance to have a closer look.

A loud click in his head made Gaster flinch, and he recoiled, yanking away his hand. Everything went blurry before his eyes: just like before, when the pain from skull cracks tortured him. Unexpectedly for him, he found himself to be a spectator of the situation, standing farther away from Sans; it allowed him to take a better look on the other monster.

“Sup, bro”, the tall skeleton dressed in a red hoodie greeted Sans drowsily. “How you doin’?”

“I’m always doing well, bro! And you must’ve done nothing as always!!”, The little monster puffed and entered the same pose he used while talking to Gaster. The other skeleton shrugged.

“Oh come on, I’ve got a skele- _ton_ of work to do.”

He winked at someone in the distance – the doctor worried that it was directed at him. The child by the skeleton’s side giggled; but Sans didn’t seem to like the pun.

“Again! You’re at it again making jokes!!” He even began pounding his right foot, almost falling through the snow on the walkway. “We need to look for a human, and _you!_..”

“Gah, calm down, Sans. Here you go. Found something”, the other skeleton lightly pushed the child closer to the small monster. “Here’s my skele-ton of work.”

Shuffling her feet shyly, Chara waved her hand at him; he almost exploded from delight and covered his always smiling face.

“It’s... that’s... that’s it?”, he couldn’t believe his eyes. “It’s a human, isn’t it? _Isn’t it??”_

“Yes”, the monster answered somewhat flatly. “Glad to hear that?”

“It’s... I’m... She’ll finally... I’ll be _SO! **POPULAR!**_ Papyrus, you have no idea! But!”

He stopped for a couple of seconds to catch his breath but then came back even more enthusiastic.

“ _ **But!!**_ I knew about this human being in advance! I’ve been told and very! _Opportunely! Acknowledged!”_

“Who’s guilty of that?”, the tall skeleton asked in a manner rather unbelieving than sneering.

“I’ve got an agent network! Even more... I...”, he turned around and shook his head perplexedly, “I brought one with me... Where is he? He just stood here. What’s going on??

“One would really _break a leg_ trying to adopt your pace”, Papyrus smirked and gave out another gesture – again, to Gaster’s side. Sans flared up and got ready to speak about a lot of unnecessary stuff, but the doctor didn’t see that already. Something cold hit him in the head like a sea wave – so hard his eyesight went dark and knees bent.

* * *

The next thing he saw were someone’s gloved hands.

_“Are you alright? Come on; get up and out of there!”_

All his senses dampened, and he didn’t catch the words from the first time. Only after they’ve been repeated at least twice, he gripped the outstretched hand and got up, unsteady on his feet.

_“Why didn’t you put a warning? There’s no good in doing this alone... What if I hadn’t returned right now?”_

Gradually, his vision came back, his gaze focused; regaining consciousness, Gaster glanced at the tall skeleton in front of him; he was wearing protection glasses. The doctor wanted to look around and understand where he ended up, but his body had a different opinion about it and moved on its own. His gaze crashed into the monster’s face, now lacking glasses – Papyrus’ face, strangely adult and tired.

 _“Are you feeling better now? Wait, I’ll get you something... one moment.”_ He ran off into the lab, and the doctor shouted after him with a weirdly alien and bold voice – but it sounded so much like his own:

_“You don’t need to... I’m fine!”_

Nevertheless, Papyrus returned with a glass of water with something foaming at the bottom of it and made him drink it; the monster couldn’t feel neither water nor the taste of it. What’s this event that he can’t remember? Was his conscience playing tricks on him? He never worked with anyone in this timeline, why...

Why was he in his own laboratory, his body – _but not entirely his mind?_

He suddenly felt his body becoming heavy; it stumbled towards the lab exit, swung the doors open-

* * *

And found itself at the checkpoint between Snowdin and Waterfall.

Gaster felt absolutely disgusting. He was still unwell, and his mind didn’t quite get through the event that took place just now and got Papyrus with glasses so nervous. Papyrus, by the way, was also at the checkpoint – that was his working place, to be precise. He sat at his wooden stance and was seemingly asleep, but as Wingdings came closer in hope to pass, bony fingers caught his coat sleeve.

“Are you Dings?”, a quiet voice asked him. He nodded slowly, and the grip weakened. “Heh. Wanna go to Muffet’s? I’m on a lunch break right now.”

The monster turned around. There were only two of them at the station, not counting a fishlike monster near an echo flower. As he remembered, a yellowish monster kid was also passing through this place: the one willing to see the head of the Royal Guard. Perhaps Chara was still somewhere with Sans? Or maybe... she’d already left for Waterfall?

“Okay, fine”, Gaster waved a hand. Papyrus leisurely exited his station and walked towards Waterfall, answering his companion’s surprised gaze:

“I know a shortcut.”

 

“I didn’t see you here before. Are you from the Castle?”

The scientist nodded just in case. For the last few minutes he’s been staring at his glass with something mildly burning inside, and a spider crawled out of it a while ago so he wasn’t eager to drink it so soon.

“Hmm. How do you like the town? And my brother?”

“He’s... _doing good_ ”, Gaster pressed out. “He’s got a goal... perhaps he’s gonna reach it.”

It seemed that after “doing good” his companion stopped listening.

“ _Of course he is._ My bro is the best.” Papyrus looked somewhere at the ceiling and was somewhat talking to himself. He said something else about Sans’ personal qualities, but the monster decided it wasn’t that important for him and didn’t pay attention.

“Hey, I... actually wanted to talk about something else.”

Then everything around Gaster went dark, and he turned around in panic; his companion’s hand gripped his shoulder tightly. Papyrus was the only light spot around the darkness, and he eyed the skeleton, fearing he’d fall into the void and never return anywhere again.

“Have you ever seen a talking toy?” Wingdings didn’t answer. “I’ll tell you then. Echotoys. Some people think that monsters live inside them and speak words, not mechanisms. My brother has also found one. And lately he’s been claiming it to talk to him very often. Whispering... _things_ to him. I don’t believe in monsters living inside of toys. Someone must be playing a trick on him. So please be careful and watch your back. Okay?”

 _“Okay”_ , he whispered, and his vision became clear again, as nothing has happened.

“You do remind me of someone though”, Papyrus muttered more to himself than to his companion. “Can’t remember whom. Welp. Ain’t a big deal.”

 

Leaving Muffet’s, Gaster noticed Sans in the distance, on the threshold of a two-storied wooden house: he was dressed in a peculiar manner and looked especially delighted. As he saw his brother, he rushed towards him and began telling something, swallowing words from being so overexcited; as it was his time to leave, the scientist moved into shadows. Then the sweater-wearing girl exited the house, blushing even brighter than from frosty air. Gaster sighed, relieved.

Now they were able to move on.

* * *

_Portable personal log, codename: ASTER_

_Date:[not set]_

 

i will make you work.

i.

will.

make.

you.

i’m not that dumb to be unaware of your working principles.

please.

 

please.


	5. You’re there, and I’m here – no circles in time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here, references to 'Bystander' fic begin to unfold.

_Laboratory personal log, codename: Madoka_

_Date: __.__.2____

 

M-maybe... it’s not that bad after all... Being the Royal Scientist is more interesting than I thought. I’m doing good...

Ha ha... _ha..._

I’m scared.

 

There are four flasks on my table. We’ve extracted energy pieces from human souls, the energy that keeps them alive even after the vessel’s death. Determination, as we’ve named it. Me and three other monsters left alive out of the whole team...

Tomorrow we’ll start the monsters experiment. I hope it goes well...

_I really do._

I can’t fail this... I just _can’t._ My position won’t allow me.

* * *

Waterfall was truly a magnificent place. Distant water whooshing, echoflowers’ constant murmuring, dark blue walls – that’s what the scientist remembered about it. And home sweet home, of course. He followed the girl, trying to stay unnoticed; but five minutes later, first accident happened.

A dreadful feeling embraced them both as they stepped outside the checkpoint. Tiptoeing cautiously, Chara hid in the high grass on her way and froze in place. Someone’s small but ominous armored figure stood up on the wall; both human and monster noticed a little skeleton pacing towards it.

“H-hello, Alphys”, he said, stuttering, and Gaster covered his mouth. _Alphys was a guard?_ _Even more, the head of the Royal Guard?_ “About that... eh, human I reported on earlier... Huh? Did I capture them?”

Sans averted his gaze and spoke guiltily:

“ _No._ Trying so hard to accomplish that, I... I failed.”

During their conversation Wingdings managed to sneak past them into the grass and didn’t quite hear the rest of the talk. Only when Sans left, the child allowed herself to move an inch. The grass rustled under her small hands; the monster behind Chara rushed forward.

The ominous figure moved.

Several minutes passed in agonizing silence. Both sat without a single movement, and big palms covered girl’s face along with her mouth. The air around them buzzed; Chara was about to bite the hand, but the fingers suddenly loosened: the danger was over. Not turning around, she escaped the grass field, and a yellow fidgety monster kid ran out behind her – the permanent fan of the Royal Guard head.

“Yooo! Did you see the way SHE looked at you? That... was **AMAZING!** ” he exclaimed, constantly tapping his feet on the blue rocks. “Where’s the guy that sat with you? There, in the grass?”

Chara shook her head violently; she had an idea about that person’s identity but didn’t want to think it over. The monster kid ran through the corridor, and she followed. Despite everything happening around and the grim perspectives of her future, she stayed determined.

* * *

“... if we set aside explosion possibility, our chances of tearing apart our timeline equal... almost seventy percent.”

“And the rest thirty is not... explosion, _I hope?"_

“Five for explosion, the rest for the experiment itself being bullshit.”

He heard the conversation as a distant echo, almost lacking self-control. The voice his body owned sounded alien and indistinct, but Papyrus’ words echoed in his head, reflecting and accumulating sound.

“It ain’t bullshit, I’m sure of that. It can’t be that you’ve lost so much time in vain.”

“It can, my friend, it can... Do you think I am a machine to be functioning flawlessly?”

The body laughed, but its laugh sounded insincere and repulsive. Bending over the blueprints covered with white symbols, it added new ones; Gaster recognized them instantly.

_“99% for unalterable consequences.”_

“I don’t even know what to say”, Papyrus mutters behind his back.

 

 

“I don’t even know what to say”, Papyrus says right in front of him.

As if pulled out of trance, the monster flinched and blinked rapidly; the skeleton watched his ravings, squinting.

“Are you alright?” he asked finally, losing patience.

Gaster knew for sure: he was _not._

“ _You..._ what were we talking about?” he blurted out, nervously fixing his coat collar several times.

“Well... you asked me about the human. How he – I mean, she treats the monsters. Dunno how to say that”, Papyrus shrugged and turned away his super expensive telescope. “Do you need any help?”

“No, thanks, there’s no need, I’m all good.”

 _It’s too late to help me,_ he thought, staggering somewhere opposite to the human’s direction which was the correct one. Slowly, stumbling upon blue rocks and supporting himself against the wall, he turned round the corner and stopped there. If the transfer to someone’s memories was carried out a little milder, he would bear that without a thought; but these interferences only wore him out. Holding his head, he almost bent in half, feeling the pain in his left eye crack return, the one that left him so long ago. Gaster pressed his back against the blue walls and slid down into a sitting position. For the thousandth time he regretted that he didn’t stay in the Ruins with his tempered but cozy former king.

 

Then a tiny human hand grabbed his coat collar.

* * *

It grabbed him and dragged into absolute void. Not that Gaster hadn’t been there before, but... The void was _different_. Not that cold and endless and empty – it was _finite_. As if he sat inside a key-locked drawer, and someone just so happened to unlock it. What a tremendous event.

Wingdings didn’t feel like solid matter, more like a border between the emptiness that became his home and the real world. He couldn’t glance at himself and see at least a tiny bit of himself; he tried swinging his hands and realized he had none.

He saw a child. A small human standing right in front of him, almost stepping inside the coal blackness surrounding them both.

The human stared _straight at him._

He tried making a single sound – but the air was shattered by prodigious wavering after which the kid covered their ears and grimaced in attempt to say something. Cold, Gaster felt so _cold_ that he thought about a pool of ice cold water in which they were both swimming. But the stubborn human doesn’t see the water, doesn’t feel its temperature. What are they?

 _“Why did you come here, small one?”_ he attempted to say once more. They must’ve only heard two last words, and they asked:

“ _Small one?_ You must be talking about me. But I’ve got a name, it’s...”

And Gaster’s word crushed onto the human’s one.

_“Frisk”._

 

 

Frisk is _alive_. Frisk travels through Waterfall.

Frisk had his story restarted for the first time.

Thoughts and pieces of timelines familiar to the monster whirled in his mind – a mixture of segments, feelings and memories. _“I know everything”_ , he told the human, but was it correct? He knew and he saw all that was happening and will happen – and he could _only understand a tiny little part_ he needed to retain sanity.

Frisk said something else. Humans talked so much... the scientist got out of the habit to withstand large amounts of talking. They seemed to have asked... _how does the “ghost” know everything._ Unbelievable cold crawled under his non-existing ribs, and it was only now that Gaster realized: it wasn’t cold _around_ him, it was _his own_ cold.

He no longer had a SOUL.

The substance he consisted of shuddered like jelly. He didn’t see himself or his body but he felt it melting and blending with the darkness which he turned into with his never-ending guilt. Frisk watched him in fright, talked and talked – and he didn’t listen, and he couldn’t listen. The ambient sounds blended into one continuous rumble, from which there was only one escape –

_the door._

* * *

Never in his life (and after life), even during the period of designing that goddamn machine, did he feel so tense. Events entangled him, but he didn’t understand whether they were real, or the past played jokes on him again. When Frisk left in horror, he didn’t even notice himself disappear with him – he was literally _removed_ from the narrow room he sat in. Gaster remained in the same place where it kicked him out at; he sat, holding his head and howling, not feeling the everlasting rain. The crack at his face got on his nerves, even though the pain was considerably less hurting than the one he had a month ago. The monster spent about half an hour like that, not hearing a thin sound behind his voice – as if a musical box played silently somewhere around his location, started and forgotten by someone.

Then he finally opened his eyes and saw a large stone sculpture in front of him. It was a horned monster statue, and a couple of flowers grew at its very feet. Someone compassionate put an open umbrella into the monster’s hand; a melody, weirdly familiar and shy, came from inside the statue. Gaster remembered how he passed by this statue, although in very rare cases, as a child... he stood in front of it, clutching a worn umbrella and waited for something to happen.

_Or did he?_

The events were so blurry in his mind that he didn’t quite grasp whether they were memories or fiction of his mind. Maybe he created these memories for himself to connect the statue with his past self... The music was calming nevertheless, smoothing the world’s sharp edges and making the monster slowly forget the pain behind his left eye. Unsteady, he got up on his feet; took a step, and one more, and more – until he found himself face to face with the sculpture. He took a deep breath. Some very recent events showed up in his mind: Asgore sitting, heartbroken, in his chair in the Ruins, alone and desperate, and Dings himself standing in front of the former ruler, clenching his fists, regretting everything at once.

 _“Forgive me for leaving you... twice”_ , he muttered, gaze down on the flowers that placed themselves in the blue rock cracks. Then, not looking up, he took the umbrella out of the statue’s hand; the melody almost instantly stopped. Not turning around, Gaster shuffled his feet further, clenching the umbrella - it was too small to protect him from raining; he crooked even harder and looked like an elongated shadow that carried a small red umbrella for no apparent reason.

_Thrice._

* * *

_Portable personal log, codename: ASTER_

_Date: [not set]_

 

only two months passed, and i forgot everything. how can one remember all details? how can one keep you in memory? _how?_

what kind of crazy bullshit have you built? _why_ have you built it? dunno. why am i trying to revive it? to make it work? because i don’t remember _anything_ else about you.

what were you? why do i only remember your last name?

it doesn’t work. i’ve been dancing around it for two months straight. it’s like a dissected animal at operating table and i’ve still got nothing from it.

did you do something to it? _why?_

 _you knew_ i’d try to start it all over again?

…

…

though... there’s something else.

beyond it lies death,

but it’s worth trying.

* * *

In a state of lingering apathy, Gaster walked towards the Hotland checkpoint. The overall calm around him drove him anguish: it was of course his home, but now for some reason he couldn’t stand being here. Perhaps being away from his family for a long time affected him. That’s why seeing a familiar face felt like incredible luck.

“Blooky! Blooky, _wait!”_

Half-transparent white figure that sailed north stopped and turned around. At least that non-Blooky he met in the Ruins hasn’t changed. The ghost glanced at Gaster and looked away in an instant.

“Blooky, you... You have no idea how happy I am to see you!” the monster blurted out, making him flinch and move away a bit.

“Happy... Really... First time... someone’s happy to see me...” His words sounded endlessly dull for the scientist, just like Waterfall itself – that’s what this ghost consisted of. “Aside from that human, of course... You must’ve met her...”

“A human? Girl in a sweater?” Gaster went alive. “Did she come around?”

“Yeah... a very long time ago...” Non-Blooky glanced to the northern side indifferently. “I live near this place... if you want... you can come visit... But no pressure... at all... do what you must...”

“Blooky. I’d be happy to keep you company, but”, he stuttered, “but I have to do something very important. When we meet again, it’ll _all_ be different. Do you know where the human went?”

The ghost nodded towards eastern corridor, dropping a single tear; not looking back, Wingdings darted off in that direction.

“No pressure, I said... why did he apologize...” non-Blooky mumbled, watching him. “Odd thing... what could change around... only would the snail farm work again in full force...”

Muttering under his ghastly breath, he floated further north to his house.

The doctor didn’t run for a long time. Turning right on the first crossroad, he found himself at an empty berth where the Riverperson usually visited Waterfall. He knew: it’s no use trying to overtake Chara by foot. He had to teleport. Remembering the last time he did that, he only hoped not to get stuck inside a wall or under someone’s bed.

Arriving at the berth, a coated figure only noticed a swing of a black coat – and nothing more. Humming simently, the Riverperson led their dogboat further.

 

Never before had Wingdings Gaster teleported so close to the required point. Seriously, he stood only a couple of feet away from the girl in striped sweater who stared straight to the front and looked exceptionally determined – just like that time when he instructed her in the Ruins. Cuts and scratches showed up here and there on her sleeves and cheeks; in her hand Chara still clutched the stick she got into the underground with, but on her head a pair of old clouded glasses resided.

She took a step. And two more.

 _“Chara!”_ the monster shrieked, dashing forward. She turned around, but it wasn’t surprise in her face but the determination. Gaster touched her shoulder when a loud confident voice exclaimed:

 _“This is it, then! No more running away!_ ”

He barely managed to glance up and see a yellow flash; on the mountain peak in front of them, just a second ago, stood an armor-wearing monster, and now she descended right at them with a savage yelp, filled with Alphys’ panicked timbre:

_**“HERE I COME!”** _

 

 

The last time the doctor fought someone was a fight with his younger brother, and it didn’t end well for both of them. But never before had he fought alongside a human – and even been in a battle with one!

A swing of a yellow spear – and Chara’s SOUL is stuck to the place; she flinched, fidgeted, but the monster grabbed her shoulders, whispering: _it’s all temporal, it’s gonna be alright_. Maybe Chara wondered why that monster named Dings followed her from the beginning and why he disappeared from time to time in such a peculiar manner... But she had no time to analyze that.

 **“En garde!”,** the guard cried; she lacked a helmet, and Gaster saw his former apprentice, the ingenious scientist – but from the other world, other preset. “Now you’ll stay alive as long as you will learn to face danger head-on! But that’s unlikely. You won’t last a _second_ against ME!”

The greened SOUL was granted with a very small battlefield, limited with the shield range – the magic must’ve worked this way, restricting the SOUL from movement but giving a chance to shield itself. The doctor was got lucky: this magic only worked on Chara.

The little girl used her protection well, he admitted: she parried two attacks successfully. Gaster thought suddenly that he’d never seen Alphys’ magic; now he saw short lightnings attack the shield and wondered why her attacks looked like that. His SOUL didn’t participate in the battle: the attacks were directed exclusively at the human, and he went unnoticed. Sometimes Alphys yelled phrases the scientist could hear from her in his normal timeline:

_“For years, we’ve dreamed of a happy ending!”_

Or:

_“The freedom is within our reach!”_

Getting used to his non-existence in the battle, Gaster didn’t notice the lightnings hurt human’s SOUL several times; stuck to the place, Chara staggered and stepped on his foot, gaining his attention. He caught the body, suddenly very cold but still alive. Again it was the human’s turn to decide, but she didn't want to hurt anyone – she wanted no deaths. Lightning shards flew towards her. Chara closed her eyes.

The shards broke with a tinkling sound right before her SOUL, and the remainings landed at her feet.

The girl looked up: in front of her, a white matter floated in the air, reminding her own magical shield. The same holed hand tapped her shoulder.

 _“Stay determined”_ , the voice told her. _“Defend.”_

One more attack parried. Alphys went enraged and hit the green SOUL, turning it back red; she barely dodged the attack, feeling incredibly light from the free roaming. Now, as she became free, she had a chance to rethink her position. Yes, there was a monster behind her, a weird and unexplained but helping one – and his additional shield made the battle easy, but... Chara knew: the Royal Guard leader won’t stand back. She was too determined to end the human once and for all.

Gaster was quicker to decide. He grabbed the child and jumped outside of the fighting state. He heard Alphys yelling behind, her steel boots clanging on the rocks; but his legs were much longer than hers, and he ran without turning around, clutching the human, a hurt and almost fainting child.

He saw the information board with _“WELCOME TO HOTLAND”_ slowly scrolling along it. He noticed Papyrus carelessly sleeping inside the checkpoint; he ran to the water cooler and put Chara on the ground.

And then he lost consciousness.


	6. Dear doctor, are you at home?

_Portable personal log, codename: ASTER_

_Date: [not set]_

 

ha. told ya i’m not that stupid. did you really think you’d succeed by cutting away the main circuits? nah.

so many years passed since those experiments... i don’t remember what you’ve done to screw everything up. what and why. these papers... it’s all a blur before my eyes. can’t understand a lot of it now. but it doesn’t matter.

i used the backup plan. the card up my sleeve. she didn’t even notice it happening.

i wonder... how fast it’s gonna melt me.

we’ll find out tomorrow.

i’m tired.

* * *

“Dings! _Doctor Dings!”_

The last time he was woken up like this he found himself in another monster’s memories – as he thought himself to be. He waited for bony hands to shake him by the collar, but a small amount of cold water flew right into his face instead, vaporizing almost immediately. Sobering enough to open his eyes.

In front of him, Chara stood, holding an empty water cup and looking significantly healthier; she held his head with her other hand. Focusing his gaze on her, Gaster gathered himself and moved up into a sitting position.

“Why... did you call me that?”, he asked in a faint voice. “ _Doctor_ Dings.”

“Why?.. I don’t know”, the girl shrugged, “you just look smart. And I’ve also heard from Sans there’s a doctor nearby, why not you?”

“I am not _that_ doctor for sure”, Gaster grumbled, standing up. He noticed with a quick glance that Alphys was no longer there: the human must’ve started to help him only after ending up in a safe place.

Chara pointed somewhere forward where, in the foggy cave vaults, a tall white building rested. The scientist knew it way too well. But who was in charge inside the lab now? After losing consciousness Gaster still felt dizzy and didn’t protest when the kid grabbed his hand and went onwards. Two guards were covering the elevator exit as he remembered, and they didn’t see the human – or didn’t pay enough attention.

It was way too dark inside the high ceiling rooms; so dark that Chara had to follow the wall by touch until she hit a trashcan and sent some papers from it flying. Wingdings created a picture in his mind: if more than ten years passed after his death, the probability of him not to recognize the insides of the lab equaled 98%, and that’s even rounding down. But then they heard a low hissing sound; ahead of them, a door moved in the darkness, opening and closing a black rectangle in the wall and letting someone out. This someone turned on the lights and turned to face them.

Both monsters’ faces went askew: the lab owner’s – horrified, Gaster’s – puzzled.

“Oh. _My. GOD!”,_ the scientist exclaimed and started to fret at one place, losing her composure. “I didn’t expect you to show up so soon! I’m barely dressed, my hair’s a mess, and I haven’t showered, and...”

The doctor noted quietly that “you” must’ve been Chara. Seemed that the human kid was being watched here too, and he was right to see occasional cameras around Snowdin. The other monster calmed down in the meantime and stood still – at least, tried to.

“H-hi! I’m doctor Undyne, Toriel’s Royal Scientist!”, she waved a blue hand, and the human replicated it awkwardly. “I watched your whole journey since that Snowdin door... All your fight and new friends – I’ve seen them all! And I’d lead you to the Queen right now, but... there’s one problem.”

As Undyne talked about an entertaining robot named Mettaton whose interests included murdering as much humans as possible, Gaster observed the room and its owner lazily. The main difference was the lack of working tables – there only was one, all piled up with paper notes. Undyne was the same fishlike monster who the doctor saw handling cyan spears and fighting Frisk. But here she was dressed in a more feminine way, had two good eyes, wore glasses and a short labcoat and had her hair pinned up. He didn’t have the time to decide whether it was good for her or not – all three were shook up by a loud clanging sound, as if someone was trying to break through a lab wall.

“What is it?”, the scientist smiled nervously, looking around. The clanging was enormously close; its source was most likely located right behind the walls. Gaster stepped back, vaguely remembering what was going to happen.

And everything went dark.

* * *

_Laboratory personal log, codename: Madoka_

_Date: __.__.2____

 

So far it’s going pretty well. I didn’t even hope for it to work out! Didn’t... Oh well, it’s for the best anyway. I’m sure it is!

So the Determination _does_ keep the monsters afloat. Just like humans... The main thing is not to give up now. There’s only one problem though... one Determination flask is missing, and no one admits taking it. Maybe I injected it into someone fallen down and didn’t write that down but... That’s weird.

The whole previous day I had a feeling of being watched. Someone behind my shoulder. The flask went missing the same day. This ain’t right.

I hope at least Sans feels better.

* * *

The main change in this Mettaton noticed by Gaster was a slight shift towards music activities. The quiz reminded him of the music guessing games: one of the questions contained the Waterfall statue melody, and the monster managed to tell Chara the answer. Most questions were actually spoiled by Undyne who gestured awkwardly from behind the metal box. Fortunately, the quiz was soon over, and after cellphone advancement and a short goodbye Chara went further to the orange-red rocks of Hotland, followed by Wingdings.

“Dings... can I tell you something?”

He froze and turned around, observing the human. She shuffled her foot, waited a bit – and jumped at him; her height was a little above Gaster’s waist, and her hands could only envelop this part of him.

“Thank you”, she mumbled, face tucked into thick black cloth so that her voice was barely heard. “If not for you, I’d... back there with Alphys... _I’d...”_

“Hush, hush”, the monster tapped on her dark hair, and Chara drew away from his coat. “Nothing bad would’ve happened to you. You’re strong... I told you that. _You’re capable of miracles.”_

She sniffed, straightened her sweater, glanced at him for the last time – and here they were again, going shoulder to shoulder, increasing pace. Conveyors, vents, lasers, occasional monsters met on the way – nothing kept them from going further.

Nothing but one single thing.

“H-hi! It’s Undyne!”, the voice in the cellphone barked. “It’s dark in here... oh well! I’ll hack the lights and help you a little bit.”

Just as Chara ended the call, a bright light exploded on the room, revealing it to be a filming set actually resembling a human kitchen. She turned around in hope to see her companion... but it was empty behind her back.

* * *

If doctor Gaster knew that he’s being thrown into someone else’s memories right in the moments most dangerous for little human, he’d become even more angry. But he saw nothing that happened after his vanishing. Instead of it – a muffled voice again, as if its source was enveloped with a blanket; the voice inside his head, the voice his body spoke with. It laughed loud and insincere. Just as him a while ago, when...

When what? What’s happened back then that he remembered it so uncertainly?

“What’s so funny?”

Another voice, a higher and sonorous one, like a sound inside a glass jar, it reflects from the walls. The body turned its head and looked up above the blueprints on its table. Its assistant stood there. The last time Gaster remembered him to be Papyrus dragging him out of some accident; now before the body stood someone undefined – Gaster could see neither his height nor face. The body laughed one more time.

“Wanna see a magic trick? Watch this.”

 _Pow!_ and his vision went dark, as if a black cloth was thrown upon him.

 _Pow!_ he was at the table again but looking at the papers this time. He heard the door opening, the other monster entering the room; he looked up at him. He still couldn’t see his face, but some indefinite expression froze on it, something between horror and misunderstanding; he felt it.

“ _You_... how didja do that?”, the assistant said in an unbelieving voice, not the one the body expected him to speak in. It frowned.

“What do you mean _“how”?_ Did you...”, and it fell silent from a sudden thought, “ _see_ what happened? Did you see the time reset?”

“I thought I was hallucinating. When I got up from the table at the dinner, and a second later I sat down at it again.” The assistant’s voice grew higher and indignant – but the body was okay with that.

“Nice”, it muttered with delight. “I wonder if the accident had anything to do with that.”

At this moment, Gaster was able to distinguish the monster in front of him; he was way smaller than the doctor thought. Sans’ indignant face looked through him, teeth gripped. Protection glasses were moved up on his forehead.

“Nice, you say”, he growled, but the scientist heard Papyrus’ voice, _“nice. **Nicey-nice.** ”_

He repeated this word over and over, resentful then indifferent. Then he darted off towards him, and body hands grabbed Dings’ sweater collar with incredible force.

* * *

He expected himself to fall victim to his younger brother again, but two warm small hands gripped his collar instead. Seeing how he regained consciousness, Chara sighed with relief and moved away; Gaster turned out to be leaning against some sort of a nightstand, and the child sat at his knees.

“What is even going on with you?”, she mumbled, sorrowful. She wasn’t the first one to ask, the monster thought, and not the last one for sure. “You’re here, and then you’re not. You vanish and then you reappear all of sudden. Can I help you anyhow?”

“No... Chara, you can’t”, he waved a hand, “it’s one peculiar problem. We better come along, we don’t have much time.”

After a while, as they’ve reached a relatively empty part of Hotland, the human stopped to watch a panorama of a prodigious building; it rested itself in the distance, far away from the red stone path, but even at this distance it looked striking and made Chara watch with an open mouth. A phone call from Undyne distracted her, ringing in the thick emptiness like a bell.

“See that building over there?”, she asked carefully. “This is _the CORE_. The source of all energy generated in the underground! It works by converting thermal energy to...”

 _“Shut up, Undyne”_ , Gaster muttered under his breath, listening to how awkwardly she explained the working mechanism. He knew best, after all. Putting away the phone, the girl didn’t go anywhere, still standing in front of the CORE that loomed in the dark, throwing lazy shadows onto the lava surrounding it; at the CORE itself, the lights looked as if melting the metal, reddish-black in the mist, and orange glares ate the steel, giving them a malicious hue.

“This... is...”

“Terrible”, the monster mumbled, showing his hands deeper into pockets and turning away. Chara glanced at him with sincere disbelief.

“... _incredible,_ not terrible! Why would you think so?”

“The CORE isn’t pretty on the outside but the performance rate is okay”, he answered without much enthusiasm. “We weren’t chasing the shape but the result. Nice working, as I can see.”

 _“We?”,_ Chara raised an eyebrow.

“Yep. I’ve had a team that had built it all up under my lead. Only the project belonged to me.”

Gaster talked about it in a lighthearted manner, shrugging; the kid watched him in awe.

“You must be very smart”, she finally said.

“Maybe”, he grimaced, “maybe.”

At the very elevator Wingdings remembered a very important detail – without it, the human would unlikely make it to the best outcome. He touched Chara’s shoulder.

“Go to L1. Then head south and ask the Riverperson to go to Waterfall.”

“Why?”, she wondered.

“Remember how Sans phoned you when we escaped from Alphys? He suggested to meet her and to have a nice evening together. Head there, I’m sure he’s still waiting.”

Pushing the girl into the elevator, he waved a hand wishing luck: she was going to need it, if he remembered the ongoing events correctly. Chara smiled awkwardly – and the elevator, buzzing, took her to the lower floors. Shaking his head to himself, the monster staggered away, back to the panoramic view on the CORE. She’s going to be alright for a while. Only if nothing else existed in this world that he didn’t know about.

* * *

Again, he didn’t reckon for falling outside the timeline again.

Alphys called this “falling through textures”. She was right in a way: during several seconds Gaster was floating in the darkness, slowly drifting down into somewhere. Only after that he was redirected somewhere, where he was needed more. For example, in a narrow room that sometimes appeared in the timeline of a human named Frisk.

Frisk called him a _ghost_. A nice nickname, the doctor thought, a rather fitting one. First there was nothing inside him but the ice cold emptiness, lit and warmed by nothing outside; but now he knew the reason and tried to behave calm. As if he was back in his normal timeline. Spending his unofficial time in informal talking. That was easier.

Frisk asked for an advise – and Gaster only laughed in response. His laugh sounded like an airplane turbo roar, like increscent radio broadcast – but his laugh was sincere and lighthearted, just like long time ago. What an irony! He was thrown into a situation fully foreign to him, going through shock almost every step; and this kid in a striped sweater restarts his story several times and asks him for an advise – an even more lost dead monster.

He disappeared because he’s got nothing else to say – and that’s the first time he escaped this condition willingly, being unwillingly thrown into it.

* * *

He opened his eyes – and he bounced away from the edge of the road, almost slipping off into lava.

“Hey, there you are!”, he heard a familiar voice behind his back. Turning to it, he saw Chara standing a bit away and waving her hands at him. “Where have you been again? I’ve met so many people on my way! Papyrus is selling hotdogs with water sausages! And Grillby – _Grillby is so wonderful!_ So polite... although I didn’t quite catch all of his words, he spoke too silently. Anyway!”

_“Grillby?”_

Gaster looked at the kid but then he remembered: of course, in the Snowdin bar there was another monster, and the burning spiders in cocktails... Seems these two have changed working places.

“Yep. You know, when he found out I bought a spider donut, he let me go at once! He said that one of his friends will be very happy and he won’t hurt someone who helped her at least out of courtesy. _That’s it!”_

“Hmm. Well, what can I say, you’re in luck”, the monster shrugged.

“Lucky, eh... You see, there, to the left? A scene entrance”, she grimaced, and Dings grinned. “The stuff that happened there... whooh. Though you should know what happened anyway, right?”

“Do I know?”, he asked again slyly.

“You _do_. You know everything from the beginning”, the girl crossed his hands. “How else?”

“I don’t know how else.”

For a few seconds more they’ve eyed each other until they both burst into laugh almost simultaneously – so lively and sincerely that for this short time Gaster forgot about all the devilry happening to him, that he’s almost never present in this timeline and it has to be dealt with. He just laughed like a child until Chara pulled his sleeve and pointed with a smile at the Nice Cream guy ahead.

Just as Undyne told her, there was only the MTT-resort on the way to the CORE; its sign could be seen from the crossroad with two Royal Guards and the Nice Cream guy. Though Chara hasn’t noticed another also very important fact. That fact was represented by Papyrus as if accidentally finding himself in front of the entrance; but the kid was distracted by a promising note on the floor, and she turned around the corner, leaving Gaster. Deciding not to lose time, he approached the skeleton.

“Ah, hey there”, Papyrus greeted him lazily, waving a bony hand. “I heard you two are going to the CORE... Care to spend some time with me? It’s a real restaurant, at the end.”

The doctor knew that if he would say no, Chara’d be invited instead; and so far Papyrus remained the monster arousing the most suspicion. So he agreed.

“A shortcut, right?”, he said in the monster’s back. The leader nodded.

“The usual.”

* * *

“So, this is it.”

The table was low enough for both the scientist and his companion. But there wasn’t anything they could do. At least they sat face to face, not trying to reach out for anyone.

“Tell me, is this human... _craving_ to return to the surface _that much?”_

Gaster shrugged. He didn’t talk to Chara so often to know her better.

“Huh”, the skeleton chuckled, turning away. He held long pauses while speaking, as if gathering his thoughts; that was a little unnerving. “Then the question’s to you.”

“To me?”

“Yep. Tell me please... have you ever worked in the Hotland labs? Or participated in building the CORE?”

Seeing Wingdings’ alerted gaze, he made an indefinite move with his hands.

“You see, I can’t remember where exactly I’d seen you in the past. Your name and your face are both familiar to me but I still lack understanding. So?”

“Well... I did work there, yes”, the monster pressed out. “I was busy with building. Honestly, your face looks familiar to me as well.”

Okay, that’s by far the worst he’s said. Or not entirely the worst? _Ah yes,_ there was the case when he shouted at Asgore who he really is. Good thing he interpreted this as a lie.

“Woah”, Papyrus muttered, scratching his skull. “The world is small. Why do you help the kid then? Do you think the Queen shall spare her?”

_“I hope so.”_

Silence. Suddenly Gaster felt an urge to ask him about the accident that has appeared so many times in his dreams... or in his _body’s_ memories to be precise. Then the urge disappeared – as quickly as it was born. _Not now._ Everything was going too well.

“Welp. I gotta go”, Papyrus mumbled, rising from the table. “You, uh... If you wanna protect that kid, do it till the very end. She’d under your wing. As long as you’re inseparable... nothing’s gonna beat ya.”

He turned away and slowly walked somewhere; the monster didn’t notice how he was left alone. Everything around him in the restaurant turned grey, dull and pointlessly noisy; he preferred to leave it as soon as possible, as he had nothing left to do here anyway.

The monster with a hand instead of its head told him that a kid named Chara paid for a hotel room not long ago. Gaster didn’t try to look for it, giving the little human time to rest: there was quite a challenge ahead. He thought about going further, checking if everything was in place, but then a weird idea hit him in the head. Why not heading for the Queen herself? He could try to talk her into a peaceful solution, to wait for Asgore – and he was sure to come back soon – to resolve the conflict. Then he remembered that Chara didn’t yet know one very important fact: a human SOUL wasn’t enough to cross the Barrier. He didn’t know what the human would do, would she fight to break free or to stay alive. Who knew what she’d do.

The monsters on the bridge connecting MTT Resort and the CORE could only see a faint flash of white – and there was no one left but them.

* * *

_Portable personal log, codename: ASTER_

_Date:[not set]_

 

_/record setting: multiple frequencies, voice monopoly off/_

_[sound: shouting, illegible curses, metal clangs; faraway thunder]_

_/record settings: preset frequency/_

this is it. this is the end.

damn it all to hell.

maybe i’m just not worth it? not worth being able to fix everything, to put it back where it belongs. i’m only just a sick little thief.

your damn machine... is ruined completely. hope you won’t need a shitload of metal in the future. _ha ha..._

this crap was supposed to make me determined but in fact... it made me _detached._

 

gaster...

i can only remember our last name

and that is all

 

and your face

 

_too_

 

 

if i’m ever

 

 _ever_ gonna see you again

 

i’ll beat the living crap out of you

* * *

Chara found doctor Gaster only at the elevator to the CORE. He sat near two closed doors, leaning against the wall and cuddling his knees. As she approached him and touched his shoulder, he looked up at her.

“The elevator is offline, isn’t it?” she asked quietly, and the monster nodded. “Are you alright?”

“I am always alright”, he responded wearily and slowly got up on his feet. _“Come along.”_

They proceeded in silence. The kid asked nothing about what’s happened to the scientist, and he had no heart to tell about how he’d seen a boy from the other world instead of the Queen. That child dared to slay king Asgore in his latest run. He reset immediately, but for the very fact of Asgore’s death Gaster was talking in such a sharp manner that he couldn’t help but feel sick of it now. It wasn’t Chara’s fault at all but it was still her to cope with his silent comradeship.

She didn’t complain, though. Wasn’t the first time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sans came out sort of foul-mouthed sadly.


	7. Unnatural selection

_Portable personal log, codename: ASTER_

_Date: [not set]_

 

seriously tho

from the very beginning

it was meaningless

 

i had a chance to forget everything

and i was stupid enough to hold onto past

 

i have a family. and i tried to put life back into this piece of metal crap, as if it contained all my future inside.

it’s not true. why did i realize that just now?

 

yes, i remember you. so what? can i help you? i don’t even know where you are and if i have any chances.

especially now.

 

goodnight, sweet prince

* * *

The main thing was to _stay on the way._

Perhaps if Chara listened to her elder friend more carefully, his advice would help her. On the third crossroad, her attention was caught by a shooter game, and she lost the monster. On returning, she didn’t find anyone: maybe the scientist noticed her disappearance and took the wrong turn looking for her. Chara thought that he knew the insides of the CORE better than the fingers on his hand, so he’d quickly find her. To make things easier, the human stayed on the crossroad. The smell of ozone filled the air; all around her, there were countless wires, sensors and lights, pipes with unsolid cladding. _Undyne doesn’t visit this place so often,_ Chara thought.

“Chara! Chara!..”

She was right about something: Gaster didn’t stand still as he noticed that the child was gone. To be precise, he thought that she ran away or decided to play hide and seek. Cursing under his breath, he went in the approximate direction of her disappearance; sometimes he stopped to observe the building.

The CORE wasn’t much different from his memories; even more, it was working. They began using it after his death anyway. He was proud of his metal creation, even though it was a labyrinth inside and an ominous giant creature from outside. The CORE was working – and that meant fulfilling its basic function.

In one of the crossroads the doctor found some sort of a secret passage – a passage to a section, cut off the main system. Undyne must’ve done that to make sure no one falls down the maintenance brigde; but in some places metal was more fresh than the others. Why would it be cut off later than everything else? Gaster caught himself thinking about how he’s still unaware of the previous Royal Scientist that had disappeared not long before the prince died. He also didn’t talk to Undyne who was his main information source as a sort of follower.

Drowning in his thoughts, he didn’t notice how he stopped walking. And when his steps quit echoing, the surroundings pressed against his skull. There were no white bluish lights around: the lighting was brought to minimum leaving only metal bridges and some wall signs visible. The doctor remembered what this section was; some time ago – namely several months ago counting from his death – Sans met here a human SOUl preprocessed by Alphys. The corridors looked narrower, and the ceilings lowered; under the latticed floor, lava floated lazily, making it appear ten times closer.

One of the section crossroads led him to a dead end. Far from him, about thirty meters away, an elevator was visible, but the bridge to it was almost completely destroyed. Gaster didn’t think about how the bridge collapsed; for him it was more important that the human wouldn’t get anywhere further away from here. Chara wasn’t here, so he had to head back.

Although some strange impulse to stay and watch the dead fiery floating substance under made him stand still. He simply stared at it; in the distance beneath him, lava was licking the metal supporting pillars, floated, popping bubbles and eating random pieces of matter that fell into it. Ceilings and walls stepped aside here, creating an enormously large hall, only illuminated with the red streams down the walls. This was supposed to be intimidating for _any_ visitor, both a human and the scientist that was familiar with the usually neat and bright insides of the CORE. This cut off section resembled hell, a train’s hungry throat to be fed with coal. It wasn’t smoking black though, but it was steaming.

It was _supposed_ to be intimidating. But it didn’t intimidate Wingdings, it was rather enigmatic for him. At some point he thought that hands are reaching out for him from the burning abyss, hands covered with grey dust. In his chest, a weird feeling appeared: emptiness, as if he was pulled by his collar like a doorknob, and he ended up in a locked up camera obscura, and it went on and on.

It was different this time. Squinting like a bit black and white cat, the doctor watched the lava passing him by, and the hands didn’t go anywhere – they kept reaching out, they were almost at his coat collar, about to grab him and pull down, and he only had to make a single step _to—_

A bony hand grabbed his shoulder so tight that his sweater was caught in fingers.

* * *

_Laboratory personal log, codename: Madoka_

_Date: __.__.2____

 

Those monsters still feel okay. Have to hope for the best now.

My guys said they’ve seen monsters in Hotland who looked like ghosts. Grey, repeating something about the same person. And when you turn around, they disappear. Then everyone says they don’t remember whom they’ve seen at all. What the hell... are they playing jokes on me?

Then king Asgore asked if I’m going to work with the former Royal Scientist’s project... He said a weird name. Who is doctor Gaster? I don’t remember anyone by that name. Anyone I ask doesn’t say anything. Whether they don’t know or don’t want to say, hell knows.

* * *

_“Careful.”_

He doesn’t need to turn and face the one who held him from falling. But he had to face him anyway, out of politeness at least. The light framed Papyrus’ form in an especially wicked way, taking the fact that his usually half-closed eyelids contained no eyedots. For Gaster he almost completely remained covered by snadows. _“How did he get here?”_ , the doctor thought.

Then he remembered how the section entrance was _forced open._

“Have you lost the human?”, the skeleton squinted. “Tsk tsk, told you to stay together and watch each other.”

“She’s got Alph... _Undyne_ for that”, the doctor muttered, shoving his hands deeper into coat pockets. “Why did you come here?”

“To talk. For example, to you.”

“We talked a few hours ago.”

“Ah, this... This wasn’t even a conversation; I didn’t quite gather my thoughts. It’s all better now. I wanted to give you one more advice about the human, but...”

He spread his hands theatrically, making Gaster move a step away.

“That’s all I can advise. Now let’s talk about something really important.”

It was only now that the scientist noticed how the skeleton’s figure stood. _Blocking the only exit._

“This is a story... about my elder brother. Some time ago we’ve handled a situation unforgivable from scientific point of view. He experimented with alternative universes... it’s a bit hard to explain, but in short he was trying to open a hole to another timeline and see if anyone else succeeded in destroying the Barrier and how exactly they did that. But the experiments failed, and we turned that down. We both suffered in a similar fashion. He went insane with his science stuff, and I... I don’t even know how to explain. He gained an ability to reset small amounts of time, tiny pinches. No one was thought to remember these, no memories remained. But I did remember. What a punishment.”

He nodded somewhere behind Gaster; down there, to the reddish heat haze above the very lava.

“Then he fell down. So I quit all his scientific stuff and tried to do something myself, to revive the machine he built for experimenting. To put it mildly, I didn’t quite succeed. I only just melted myself because of... how did she call that? _Determination.”_

“Melt yourself?”, the monster asked with a grain of salt, and Papyrus put his finger to his teeth.

“Yes. And Determination is figuratively speaking a power which allows human SOULs to persist after death. If my brother’s SOUL was so powerful he could reset time, then why wouldn’t pure Determination give me an ability to do the same? So I thought. I was desperate. This idea was destined to work.”

Gaster’s opponent’s smile seemed to have widened. Something uneasy shuffled inside his SOUL, a feeling swiftly growing: the cold.

“I locked myself inside a time loop. A thing where you don’t move backwards or forward – you just rewind yourself in a short amount of time for just how long you want. Determination granted me incredible power, but it melted me in about a minute, so I rewound this minute again, and again, and again... You wonder why?”

A silent _“why?”_ in the doctor’s gaze dug into skeleton’s forehead.

“During these rewinds I have seen countless amounts of hell knows what. Monsters, humans, events, murders and victories, someone’s tears and tragedies... So much rubbish that I’ve been using my rewinds to fully understand what’s happened. And then I managed to jump into someone’s timeline. For just a couple of seconds though. There, my younger brother was fidgeting with the machine I damned to hell. Remember my younger bro, Dings? That funny lil’ skeleton. And he was bound to such a horrible deed. Well, I spoiled his enterprise a bit. Selfish thing to do, I understand, but I’ve only had one thought back then. Not allow my brother to suffer from the fate originally addressed to me.”

The machine Papyrus talked about blurred inside the scientist’s mind; but the more he tried to remember it and the further the skeleton’s story went, the harder it was to hold onto the story pieces: they melted inside his mind like grains of sugar in hot tea.

“How I’ve escaped the circle, I don’t know. I don’t _remember_. I just realized in one moment that I’m standing with a flask of Determination in my hand. A lot of weird stuff happened afterwards, but that’s outside of my story.” He breathed through his teeth; half-closed before, his eye sockets were now staring straight through Gaster. “Oh wow. The story turned out to be more about me than my brother. Oh well.”

“Why are you telling this to me?”, the monster frowned. It wasn’t for nothing that Papyrus had broken into this section and waited here? Did he know what’s going to happen? _Waited_ for it to happen?

“ _Why_... I wanted to play on your consciousness, I guess.”

The doctor made one last desperate move: he dashed forward to get around the skeleton when he stood closer to the right side of a corridor, but he reacted momentarily and jumped in his way. His almost unlit face’s expression reminded Gaster about Asgore whom he’s told pure truth – a face full of determination, even though too weak to turn back time.

“Tell me, Dings. Your name’s short from Wingdings, isn’t it?”

Gaster knew he didn’t need to answer: it was all clear without his approval. And his face wasn’t hard to read anyway.

Papyrus looked at him again, and his left eye socket lit up with a yellow-blue fire, especially bright in the dark of this place. Brighter than the CORE, than the sunlight in the castle.

Gaster had a sense of déjà vu.

“Then I may greet you as doctor Wingdings Gaster. Long time no see, _brother mine_.”

In the small space, where his SOUL used to be, emptiness took place. But even this emptiness now was cramped in a very familiar manner. The monster fell into a battle state, broken and having no idea if he should fight or give up at once. And at the same moment, with no warning, a white blurry patch appeared and belched a colorless energy beam.

For a split second Dings remembered Sans’ astonished gaze as he watched the blaster breaking through the shield and hitting the doctor square in the chest.

Now it was Papyrus in front of him. Has _anything_ changed beside that?

“Don’t you think I’m into doing all this again. It’s better for **_everyone_**.”


	8. It’s just you and me left

_Laboratory personal log, codename: Madoka_

_Date: __.__.2____

 

why can’t i just do everything correct

why am i so

catastrophically lucky

 

no power since morning

something’s broken in the core, the system says immediate repair isneeded

 

can’t

won’t go

 

maybe i should call for someone

just ask for help, it’s totally fine

 

no _no **no**_ i’ll have to tell about _them_

can’t tell won’t tell anything _no_

 

why can’t i just go down there, point a finger and say: i know everything, the problem’s gonna have a bad time

because

 _someone_ built it

 _someone_ designed it

 _someone_ **_can_** point a finger at the problem and i can’t

 

who

who _who **who**_ was that

 

 _ **why**_   won’t they tell me

* * *

The white jaws closed; the blinding light disappeared, blinking on the reddish metal for the last time. Bowing slightly, the tall skeleton stood at the edge of bridge and gazed somewhere out in the distance where metal elevator doors shined, inaccessible by foot. Right after the energy beam ended, the black silhouette in front of it disappeared.

He shifted his stare to the brick red hellfire far down in the lava container. Its surface was full of bursting air bubbles, but it happened all the time. Papyrus shook his head once and turned away.

* * *

Several minutes later, as the bridge remains became clear of any presence, a blast of light shined upon the steel constructions once again. At the very edge of room, doctor Gaster stood, clenching the handrails and covering his face with a trembling hand. He didn’t t first embrace the fact that he wasn’t dead, incinerated again – just teleported into different place. Then, observing the place, he concluded that it was the same and it was him who moved forward in time. He rarely got it working, but when he did it gave decent results of about ten minutes gap.

No living soul; the monster assured himself Papyrus was gone – teleported or left, no matter. Death wasn’t upon him anyway. The hands that outstretched for him out of lava disappeared too. Nevertheless he continued staring into the burning void casting grim orange lights on him, gripping the handrail tighter. He couldn’t look away. His knees trembled; he thought that just a little impact would be enough for someone to save him from falling by grabbing his sleeve.

“Dings! Dings, is that you?”

A high sonorous voice cut through the silence and stagnant air of an isolated section. A sound of small feet tapping on the metal lattice floor; a few seconds later the sound source stopped behind him. He couldn’t see the human but he knew: she was staring straight into his back.

“What are you doing here? I thought you came looking for me, and then I... Can you hear me?”

Then he turned around – slowly, mechanically broken. He was quite a sight to behold. Although the blaster beam hadn’t got him this time, his eye sockets lacked white dots, leaving only black void-like gaps in his face. Add up a twisted mouth and two large cracks ploughing his skull almost in half – that’s what Gaster has turned into. Chara watched him for several minutes; then she shifted her gaze down under his feet where lava bubbles slowly melted into each other and popped lazily. Then she looked at him again. Then at the lava. She was fighting an emotion which she failed to describe correctly. Both her and the monster haven’t moved an inch. Then the words all came back at once, building up sentences.

“Y-you... You went through all that with me to...”, she glanced into the scorching abyss, “ _to..._ No, please, _**don’t.** No...”_

Gaster was silent. He had no idea what she talked about, he was just coping with what’s just happened to him. But she... she was _terrified._ Her reddish eyes burned with anger.

“Please... There’s another way to go. You _can’t_ end it like this! You can’t just run away from the problems around you. It’s... it’s _wrong!”_

“End... _what?”_ , the scientist muttered with a tint of surprise but wasn’t taken into consideration. Chara went on with the moralizing and he didn’t listen, trying to delve into what he’s already heard.

He glanced at the girl’s frightened face. Down his feet. At his hands, still gripping the handrail; the metal construction under his hand was shaking and ready to crumble. Then he was flabbergasted.

 _Of course._ A cliff, a certain death waiting for him down there, and he was standing near this cliff almost done. What _else_ could she think?

“Chara, I didn’t want to...”

He came off the handrail, wanted to make a step forward, to pat the child’s hair as if nothing’s happened: but as he only stepped away, Chara dashed forward and grabbed his waist – just as back in Hotland when she wanted to hug him, but this time it had a different purpose.

“I won’t let you”, she murmured, burying herself in the thick coat cloth. “You can’t do that, Dings... think of what shall become of those who care about you here. You’re a monster, you live down here. You must at least have some friends.”

“I don’t have friends”, he protested.

“Lies. You can’t live and be unnoticed.”

“Look, I’m... in a _very_ weird situation right now.”

“It’s not a reason to do that anyway”, the girl muttered, holding him tighter. “Tell me what’s happened to you.”

“Chara, I had no intention to harm myself. Yes, I’m in trouble, and you see that yourself. But this ending would only return me to the start.” He gently put her aside, and she looked up at him with eyes full of tears. “So pull yourself together.”

“You too... pull yourself”, Chara punched him in the hip. “I will soon reach the Queen, and then... Then we’ll see what happens. Maybe you need something from her?”

Gaster shrugged. It made no sense debunking Undyne’s lies so far.

* * *

One room left until the elevator entrance. Chara shuffled her feet on the bridge to the last section; her older acquaintance followed her calmly, looking around on his way, until a loud yelp behind got his attention.

“Hold on! Wait!”

Towards him, covering huge distance in seconds, ran the Royal Scientist. Gaster jerked to catch the human, but she was already gone. Thrilled, he saw an open door a couple of feet away; and he would’ve possibly entered too, but Undyne grabbed him with both her hands.

“I know, _I know_ where I’ve seen you! How didn’t I remember that... _You_ were the Royal Scientist before! Your last name is Gaster, isn’t it?”

 _“It is”_ , he nodded in prostration, “but...”

“But you were... I mean, we all thought you to be dead! Papyrus said that on the record, and we’d never think... You were alive all the time? Why’d you never tell us?”

“Undyne, I was dead. And I’m dead now, damn it!” Something in Undyne’s carelessly delighted tone angered him. “What are you even doing here? What happened?”

“I-I’m here to escort the human!”

The door was not shut. Undyne rushed and banged on it, yelling something; the monster didn’t listen, trying to remember what awaited Chara in the next room. Each time he recalled what he saw in the void, it got harder: he tried to catch on and the memories ran like rats from a sinking ship.

“...then he will become... uh, he’ll become... vulnerable. Well, gotta go!”

Then he remembered who Chara’s going to face.

“Undyne”, he touched her shoulder, “what are the human’s chances against Mettaton?”

“From now on, they’re _massive”_ , she mumbled with a sigh. Something so doomed showed through her posture that Gaster felt an urge to uplift her spirit somehow, to tell that her adored robot will be alright, and not only him... But instead, he exclaimed something that made Undyne flinch and enter a battle state.

A while ago, this condition almost killed Wingdings; now he observed the totally confused and flabbergasted scientist before himself; her hands trembled.

“You... h-have got _no SOUL?”,_ she barely pressed out. “R-really? Not a trick?..”

He shrugged. His whole body was shaking inside, the emptiness between his ribs howled, but his posture was incredibly tranquil.

“ **Dead** , I told you.”

He fell out of this condition almost instantly. Undyne stood in front of him, pale and averting her gaze.

“How... _is t-that...”_

“Undyne. Pull yourself together.”

“Y-yes, yes, I’m... I’m sorry.” She straightened up her labcoat sleeves and turned to the locked door. “We need to save the human, or she...”  
“Her name is Chara, and _yes_ – we need to hurry.”

* * *

It was too quiet. Too little movement around the castle. Pacing through the empty corridors, Sans mused that, perhaps, it was better a while ago when he visited this place in a company of his elder brother who has only left a shell of himself in his mind. A face, a tall figure dressed in dark coat, a last name – Sans’ own. Having been a scientist with a place by the labs, the small skeleton wasn’t often required to report to the king – and now Asgore wants to see him more than one year after the incident.

The closer to the throne room, the more people he met. At the elevator, Sans has even met a lonely guard who showed him the way and added that the king was expecting him. The monster could of course use magic to get there faster – so-called “shortcut”, - but lately he has quit caring about the amount of time he wasted. He took a walk.

Soon, a sign appeared behind the corner, and after that – a sunlit room where one could even hear birds singing from the surface. The room closest to escape and their limbo source. Sans increased the pace: he couldn't keep the king waiting too long.

“There you are”, he heard a voice rattle. He was expecting him, that’s right. The monster proceeded cautiously, walking on the leaves and yellow flowers, crumpling feeble petals under his slippers.

“what’s happened, your majesty?”

“Nothing special, really... Take a seat, will you?”

He pointed at the throne. Sans didn’t quite like this idea but he obeys and, a minute later, he sat at the king’s place, legs dangling. There were no other sitting places around. Asgore kept silent for a while, not facing him.

“A year and half passed after the incident. The one after Alphys has taken _his_ place.”

The skeleton wanted to add something, but didn’t dare to. Not now.

“Oh, don’t say you do not understand.”

“depends on what you’re talking about”, Sans answered softly. The king didn’t turn around.

“ _Him._ Back then, as Alphys had just told us about everything... we were so shocked we did not have a proper burial ritual. Why... haven’t we done all that?”

“because there was nothing left of _him_ ”, the monster observed in the same tone and averted his gaze, watching the crumpled yellow flowers under his feet.

As he looked up, he saw the other monster staring through him.

“You do remember. You know what _he_ was.”

“partially. honestly speaking... it’s the only thing i remember”, he admitted unwillingly, shoving his hands into shorts pockets. “i know i’ve been _his_ closest assistant. that i was very close to _him_ in social sense. i know what _he_ ’d looked like in my eyes. nothing else.”

“You are _his_ brother, are you not?”

“perhaps. i’m not even sure anymore. at all.”

Few more minutes of silence. Sans looked down again, heard the plants crackling under Asgore’s feet. Then the king went back to talking.

“Nobody remembers, Sans. Can you imagine that?”  
“imagine _what?”_

“Think about it. When monsters perish, they remain in tales; they stay on other monsters’ memories whatever they had been in their lives. They fall into ashes, but they live inside the others.” He stopped, thinking over his thoughts. “ _Him_ , on the other hand? Why do only two of us remember the monster named Wingdings Gaster? What kind of curse is that?”

“what do you mean no one?”, Sans asked with disbelief, and the answer came even sooner.

“Even Alphys has no knowledge on what monster had been the Royal Scientist before her. She worked under him and she talked about him... all the time I heard her talking. One can’t simply lose memories about someone so deep inside your SOUL.”

Silence again: heavy like a milky morning fog. The skeleton’s started to have a headache because of it.

“your majesty”, he spoke after a while, “my younger brother... he remembers too. and he keeps reminding me. we’re not the only ones.”

Asgore turned around, looking at him with a sad smile.

“Two brothers and the monster king. What could unite us that we are to remember him?”

“maybe...”, Sans fell silent; words stuck in his head, “ _he_ remembers _us_ and we remember in response? a two-sided process.”

“How can he be dead and remember?”

“i don’t know. he could do a lot of stuff. until recently i couldn’t even believe he’s dead.”

He kept his head low, feeling the white dots in his eye sockets disappear.

“i tried to get him back. to make him return. it’s all rubbish. then i tried to forget.”

“And how is it doing?”

“feels poisonous.”

Sans heard the steps coming closer; he felt a heavy clawed hand on his shoulder. He glanced at Asgore with empty gaze.

“I called you here today to make sure I was not the only one. If you ever feel bad about it, feel free to visit me. I understand _everything_ you went through.”

After a short departure, the monster left the throne room in prostration. The king’s last words made him a bit upset. _No, King Fluffybuns understood nothing._ He didn’t have to slay his own brother to save the underground and then ground himself for having his backup plane drown.

Of course, Sans agreed to visit. What else could he do?

* * *

“To escape.. you need to take her SOUL.”

Doctor Gaster could feel the child’s red gaze piercing the scientist who stood a bit farther from them. Just some time ago she watched Undyne with delight, when the fish monster managed to open the door which closed behind the girl. Though it remained a secret from Chara that the door was destroyed by a blaster beam; she didn’t hear a conversation behind this door after which Wingdings decided to fight. The human was lucky enough to finish Mettaton’s entertainment show just a few minutes before that.

“You have to kill Toriel.”

Now she stood, her back to him, this little overdetermined girl, and her furious energy made Gaster’s head spin. The scientist shrank and turned around; she was a pitiful sight to see.

“I’m sorry.”

He expected anything: screaming, indignation, curses from Chara, but she behaved in a completely different way. Not even sparing a glance for Undyne, she stepped inside the elevator chamber; the doctor followed her silently and pressed a button on the panel. The surrounding events looked like some unreal game to him, as if it wasn’t him controlling his body, but the human’s determination pulled the strings instead.

“Dings.”

But this was obviously the fault his sick imagination.

“Huh?”

“I... I don’t know what to do.”

The girl turned away; Gaster watched her close, and both waited for their friend to speak up. Then Chara continued.

“I thought... that I’d only need to visit the Queen and ask her to let me out... and everything would be okay. But now...”

“Char—“

“I don’t want to kill _anyone_ , Dings”, she spoke softly, almost whispering. “I just want to get home. Don’t want anyone’s suffering and tears. Why is it all so... so _unfair?”_

Once again, he wanted to tell Chara all he knew, to scatter memories he didn’t own... But they faded away from his mind, and he couldn’t even pull the strings he had remaining. _Lotta help you’re being,_ he mumbled to himself.

* * *

They stood in silence until the elevator arrived. Metal doors slid to the sides, and Gaster stepped forward, but stopped and turned round, not hearing those little steps behind. The human sat under the button panel, covering her face with hands, not moving. The monster called her out several times, but to no avail.

“So you’re shifting this onto my shoulders”, he muttered quietly, entering the chamber and carefully picking Chara up. “Okay. Let it be.”

To his amazement, the girl didn’t yell or resist anyhow – she just accepted her fate. After all, she was just a child. How old was she - ten, twelve years? Gaster caught himself thinking that he’s never asked Frisk about his age on falling down the mountain. Of course Chara was scared. Give an adult man an unexpected task to slay the Queen of all monsters, and he will shudder; and she was _a child_ who harmed no one.

Those several weeks ago, when Wingdings was still alive, the king expected to see him in rare cases – especially when the CORE was close to being finished. But even on those rare cases the castle was more crowded than now, as he carried the little human along the empty grey corridors. He saw magnificent towers on his left and right, the dark-green ivy sprouting at the bottom; even Chara opened her eyes and watched the endless surroundings blankly.

Only at the doorstep of New Home, just as grey as everything around, Gaster halted and put her on the ground.

“Take a look at the children’s room”, he said as if occasionally, “I’ll wait.”

He watched her going for a while, until she disappeared behind a door; then he followed her into the house. When Chara was out of his sight, he found two keys in New Home and opened the chain blocking basement access. The house looked exactly like Asgore’s one back in Ruins, and Gaster could guess what awaited them. He stopped at a cupboard with yellow flowers, leaning against the wall; suddenly, memories overwhelmed him, almost crushed by all the events: his personal visits to Asgore, his last New Year, a his quiet conversations with the king... What on Earth was he thinking when his SOUL was scattered across this timeline, and in his homeworld he’s turned into a black shapeless creature? What will _he_ do now?

“Dings, I’ve found... something.”

Little fingers pulled his coat sleeve; he flinched and turned to face Chara. A small heart-shaped locket hung on her neck, and she gripped a worn dagger in her hands which looked like those used for cutting down disobedient plants.

“This. I don’t know... if I’m supposed to take it with me”, she handed the dagger to Gaster. “If I have to fight the Queen, then I... What do I do?”

The monster observed her. Chara tightened her grip on the dagger; she looked so much like Frisk when he went crazy and... though the scientist didn’t really remember that part. As he got ready to announce his thoughts, the girl solved the problem herself: she put her hands behind her back.

“What’s meant to be, will happen”, she said without any emotion. Her voice tone was so bleak and colorless that it made the monster’s empty SOUL space shrink. Instead of answering, he gave her a hand to lift her again, and she glanced at him with surprise. “I’ll go myself, I’m not an infant.”

“No, Chara. We don’t have time.”

From the height of the tall monster, the ground looked distant, and other monsters were especially tiny. They were all mumbling something, but Gaster decided to tell Chara the history of Royal family himself. He replaced Chara with Frisk in it; he didn’t believe his own words while telling about Asgore having left his throne, enraged by his wife’s actions. Chara listened carefully, not interrupting, but at the end of story she said one simple thing:

“So that’s my price for being free...”

And the doctor pretended to not have heard this.

* * *

They stopped at the doorstep of Throne Room. Low humming was heard from it, as if someone was singing a familiar tune; birds sang outside, and it was unknown whether they lived underground all the time or got inside from the human lands. Letting the kid go, Gaster stepped back and turned round the corner.

“Go. I’m not even supposed to be here”, he whispered in response to Chara’s gaze. She resented.

“Didn’t you come here to solve a problem of yours?”

“Your problem is way more important”, he objected and gently pushed her towards Throne Room.

Frowning, the girl turned way and went straight forward, onto the green grass and amber-yellow flowers that seemed to be just everywhere. In the center of the room, under the largest sunlight spot, a tall figure stood, wearing a purple cape, their back to Chara. They were the one singing, but the song faded, as the kid’s steps emerged.

“Who is there?” The child was silent. “Just a minute, I have almost finished watering these flowers.”

Chara could understand now who stood in front of her. She knew why there was such a hunt for her SOUL. She was scared. Queen Toriel was too promising and saint in the monsters’ stories; way too promising.

“Here we are!”, the figure said with satisfaction and turned to face the girl. Outside of Throne Room, doctor Gaster froze with tension, looking from behind a corner.

Chara gripped the hidden dagger in her hands.

“Hello, how can I...”

In front of her, a monster stood, looking a lot like the guardian of Ruins; a bit lower than him but taller than Gaster; majestic, sublime Queen Toriel, and the crown on her head used to belong to the King – the King of the monster who was afraid to enter Throne Room.

_“Oh.”_


	9. Black holes and revelations

She’s at the threshold, the final frontier. A couple of days ago she would’ve never thought about putting her life on a stake for escaping the Underground. Now, as any other alternatives were cut off, she was left with only one way.

“Wait, Chara, I beg you.”

A voice comes alive behind her, someone so distant and alien that human kid winces at it but doesn’t turn around to face its source. The thin monster is just a tad away; he can even stop the girl by force but he makes no attempt to. She stands still.

“Chara, are you... sure you know what to do?”

Is she? Is there any choice given? Alphys was right about fighting Toriel and standing up for her life. Was she ready?

_Who knows._

“I want you to know one thing. Whatever decision you make right now, you can change it. You’ve got a SOUL of impossible power. You can fix your mistakes by rewinding the time you’ve spent here. You’re gonna face some serious issues here, I’m not joking on that.”

“Dings”, she answers quietly, “I don’t need any of these. Just help me out in battle.”

She turns away again. Shivers travel down Gaster’s spine; Chara matured so much in the last three days that he no longer recognized the little girl he met in the Ruins, the girl who fell down a trap and tied her hair with a red faded ribbon still hanging on her ponytail.

He’s one foot away from her. Chara crosses the line alone.

* * *

“If by any means you have an unfinished business... please do what you must.”

It’s cold in here. Way colder than Waterfall with its dark water hardly giving reflections. There is nothing between the two of them but the overconsuming energy embracing almost everything. It makes weird noises, probably distorting sounds from the surface.

“I’ve got nothing to finish”, Chara mutters.

“Oh... I see.”

The queen isn’t facing her. She stands in silence, watching the colorless membrane around them. Then she turns around, reluctantly and slowly.

“Ready?”

The human doesn’t at once realize that she’s surrounded by seven glass jars. Six of them contain human SOULs; they all shine so brightly, each with its own color, but this light does not help the Barrier, being absorbed by it instead. Then the red SOUL blinks and falls into pitch black darkness. Chara’s mind is completely empty; her fingers gripped the knife, pointing it ahead – at the _adversary._

“Human. _It was nice to meet you.”_

She feels a palm on her back. She does not even turn to see the monster behind.

**_“Goodbye.”_ **

* * *

_Portable personal log, codename: ASTER_

_Date: [not set]_

 

i got it now. i _goddamn got it._

you knew about this whole thing, huh? you knew and you never told me. and i can’t say anyting bad about a deadman now.

it was actually papyrus. i was right about seeing him... _there in the workshop._ dunno what makes everything come up so suddenly.

no wonder i failed back then.

 

today i woke up yesterday again. maybe im going insane, nothing else. but no. it keeps repeating, they keep saying the same words over and over. why?

if that was your fault, they would only experience a few minutes fallback. they experience hours. sometimes half a day.

 

whatever that is... _it_ won’t last long.

im sure.

* * *

Gaster was right, of course. Similar to Asgore in many aspects, Toriel didn’t have any mercy on the little human. She discouraged Chara fom the very beginning, leaving no other choice but fight; she attacked with fireballs, but only one of her attacks reminded the girl of the caretaker of Ruins.

The scientist stayed in shadow. He knew that without a SOUL he had more chances of being unnoticed by Toriel; but he couldn’t make himself take part in the battle until the very end. Only when the human SOUL was left with five so-called health points out of twenty, he stood out.

Rushing with a wave of blueish cyan, the trident suddenly bounced off a half-transparent white wall that covered Chara, shielding her whole body. She could hardly stand and would fall down if the holed hands didn’t catch her at that very moment. That drove the queen into a completely different state of mind.

“It’s...”, she squinted, and the trident in her hands came down. “It’s _you.”_

Chara turned around; Gaster’s gaze froze at the queen’s face, full of horror. He seemed to be ready to break into a run.

 _“You’re alive”,_ Toriel say barely audible. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

 _Not the best topic to discuss_ , the doctor mumbled, eyes closed. What were the relationships of that _other Gaster_ in this timeline? What if his 'love interest' was, in equivalent to the king... _the queen?_

“Your majesty, it’s really not—“

“Dings... _oh, Dings._ ”

His vision went dark. The feeling of holding a human child in his hands vanished with everything else that surrounded him.

* * *

His movements are constrained, his gaze was turned down to face the flowers. God, flowers were all around him. Everywhere he looked. He felt them watching him from the whole room and shaking their heads in a silent blame.

Once again, he is and isn't himself at the same time. The dreadful feeling that made him obey an alien body was back. He doesn’t know who’s standing in front of him because the body won’t look up; but it experiences something burning hot. Something between shame and sorrow – perhaps both in unequal proportions. Perhaps that’s why the body was staring at its polished black shoes.

“Forgive me”, it suddenly says, “It's better if I just leave.”

This time, its voice is irrationally familiar to Gaster, as if he’s talking on his own. The body turns away, finally looks up and wants to leave – no, to run, to escape. Then a big clawed hand grasps his thin one; it turns back, and the doctor can now see queen Toriel through the body’s eyes.

“Dings, what are you apologizing for?” she asks with a genuine surprise. “There is nothing shameful in what you have said.”

“ _Nothing_ shameful?!” The body is shaking with a feeling not so obvious for Gaster but doesn’t look away. “ _How was that **nothing,** your majesty?_ Have you even heard me saying those words?”

“Why yes”, Toriel responds calmly, closing her eyes with condescension. “I have heard you. Tell me, my friend...” 

The body doesn’t blink. _Its pupils may have contracted to tiniest dots,_ the monster speculates. He is somewhat familiar with this whole situation but he can’t remember exactly what happened. And he’s not okay with it.

“Are you sure? Have you told me the truth?”

Her dark-brown eyes look at Gaster with an all-knowing calm, as if she already knows the answer. Gaster is sure she does. That’s women. But the body seems to think the opposite, according to its horrified reaction.

Then it finally gathers all its determination to say only one word.

_“Yes.”_

His judge’s gaze softens even more; the fingers gripping his wrist unclench.

“I love you too, Gaster.”

Somewhere at the middle of this sentence the body goes deaf, as if a pool of water consumes him. It still stares at Toriel, not looking away, and so does Wingdings, silently making notes on his confirmed thoughts. The body is still speechless as the queen pulls him closer and presses her warm lips against his tightly shut mouth. And Gaster shudders with the feeling that immediately imbues the whole body he inhabits. If he would’ve been separated from this shell and had a chance to watch the situation from afar, he’d still not be able to move: that’s how strong the feeling was.

Then he remembers something similar that took place in his life. His _very life_ , not a shell or this timeline. What exactly happened, however, he can’t see as the memories fail him.

* * *

In a blink of an eye, the scene changes.

He has seen it before: a shower of fireballs attacking the kid’s SOUL right in front of him. He knew Chara had five HP.

He didn’t even flinch.

She is thrown back, and Gaster catches her barely living body. One health point left, he realizes; the queen didn’t have the heart to kill the child for good. She still can’t see the other monster, and he’s hiding in a shadow. What should he do?

_What indeed…_

What does he need, why’d he reach this place?

What could he receive?..

Chara’s turn – and she attacks, not eating anything from her backpack. Toriel’s face never changes, as if nothing hurts her, but the doctor knows: the dagger is precise and painful in its hits. Chara counts on his help, caring about attacking and not healing herself.

She is right to hope so. None of the fireballs touch the girl’s SOUL, evaporating in contact with the white shielding matter. Toriel recognizes the magic immediately, gets ready to say something—

 

And the last fireball hits the red heart.

The shield disappears moments away from a direct hit.

 

Chara turns her head, struggling for life – her companion looks through her, gazing at the bright red light coming from her chest. Then its source floats out of the girl’s body; a clot of energy, full of dreadfully powerful Determination. The monster covers the SOUL with his hands like a candle flame, as if saving it from the blowing wind; the light comes through his hands as well.

Everything is over in one moment. The red shining disappears as the SOUL falls inside the black matter, through the monster’s buttoned coat and inside his chest.

_“Dings...”_

A silent and unbelieving voice catches his attention, and he glances at its owner. Still clenching the trident, Toriel looks at him with a mix of horror and disbelief in her gaze. _She_ killed the human, no doubt in that, but Gaster just doesn’t feel confident enough about it.

Slowly getting up and leaving Chara’s body on the ground, he makes several steps towards _her_. She doesn’t move; her hands, tight grip on a weapon, are trembling and are ready to drop it any second. Gaster sees everything.

Gaster passes her by, heading to the Barrier. Only one monster crossed it, and how dramatically his life had ended...

**_“Gaster!”_ **

He hears a desperate yell from behind. He doesn’t turn around. Doesn’t hear any glass breaking. Toriel could break down the glass cases and consume the SOULs... could hinder all this easily. She could – _and she didn’t_.

 _“Why don’t you stop me if you love me so much?”_ a voice comes up in his head.

Then someone’s thin quiet voice states: _it’s **not you** she loves._

Must be his conscience.

He doesn’t even touch the energy border before the SOUL in his body shatters into a myriad of red pieces, and he’s back to the place he belongs.

Void.

* * *

It only lasts for a few seconds.

Doctor Gaster sees two skeleton monsters right in front of him: one is roughly three years old, the other a bit older. Both are dressed in clothes strangely large for them, the older one’s hoodie sleeves are rolled up about half of their length just to reach his wrists.

He watches in a mist how the little skeleton is genuinely happy about something, outstretching his hands to the sky; then Gaster looks up and sees the black canvas all spangled with white dot stars. Some of them are bigger, some are smaller and some make up weird figures. He then understands that there are no stars, and the shining dots are purely fragments of luminescent crystals in the caves. The older monster doesn’t look up; he holds the little one’s shoulder and looks at him nervously. And then – Dings doesn’t catch the exact moment when – he turns around and says calmly:

“thank you, dad. a great gift for paps.”

He wants to rub his eyes or slap his face to understand whether the situation is true or not. But the vision disappears right after the older skeleton’s words. It disappears – and Gaster is at the final frontier again, and the kid by his side is alive.

Chara doesn’t look him in the eye. The red light underneath her sweater burns even brighter.

The monster knows _this is the end._

“Chara”, he begins timidly, “I... I didn’t...”

“Shut up”, she cuts him off abruptly, tears streaming down her cheeks. “ _Shut up!_ How dare you say anything? After _that?!”_

She is still facing the ground, and Gaster can only see a part of her face, covered with a shadow. He stares at her, shivers travelling down his spine. Then the girl turns sharply, making him flinch.

“Chara, list—“

“No, **you** listen to me, Dings. It’s over. Don’t follow me. Anywhere! It’s my fight and my freedom, and I’m gonna get it myself if needed. And _**you!..** Get away from me!!”_

Her shouting rolls through the hall and echoes from the western wall. Gaster recoils from the force of the sound the surrounded him in one single moment. He tries to approach her, maybe start a friendly conversation, but Chara takes out her worn dagger and points it at her former companion.

“You come closer – **you’re dead.** I swear.”

Her red eyes, even more read from crying, are burning through the doctor. There’s no other way for him now, and he backs off towards the throne room exit; all the time he takes to do that the girl watches him intensely. Finding himself in the sunlit room, Gaster stops, leans on the closest wall and covers his face with both palms.

_**I d i o t.** _

* * *

_Portable personal log, codename: ASTER_

_Date: [not set]_

 

you know what, dear diary?

i know what i can also do.

i can erase you for good.

 

why do i even need you? keeping the empty things i recovered for no reason. why?

youre like a time bomb. someday papyrus is gonna find you. or someone worse. whats your cultural value?

zero.

 

okay. why do i even talk about all this when i gotta delete it anyway.

good.

 

_codename ASTER: del——_

 

wait, no. stop. maybe...

no.

_no be._

 

_codename ASTER: delete the log._

**_[recovery option?_ ** _yes_ **_/_ ** _no_ **_]_ **

_no._

_[static noises]_

**_[DELETING SUCCESS]_ **

* * *

He had no idea how much time he spent sitting in the throne room. He didn’t hear the battle meters away from him; perhaps the Barrier absorbed the sounds around it, who knew.

What he knew for sure was that in one moment the space around him shifted somehow, changed its previous orbit, and he got carried away somewhere unknown by large invisible hands. He didn’t dare move and make a sound until he heard a voice near himself. A terribly familiar one.

“Well, hello once again.”

Slowly and unsteadily, his gaze focused on the figure across him. Angular knees, pale red hoodie, skull covered by a hood... Of course, who else could it be.

Papyrus smirked, removed the hood and gave him a hand. Despite overall nice attitude, Gaster didn’t shake the hand he outstretched.

“Oh, come on. Here, even if I wanted to kill you, I’d simply fail. We’re not the masters to this place.”

That didn’t do the trick. Shrugging, the skeleton put his hands into an integrated hoodie pocket.

“ _Wingdings._ Why do you behave like this? You’re my brother and yet you don’t greet me in any fashion.”

Gaster glanced at him, squinted and still said nothing.

“Okay, keep silence then. Do you know why we’re here?” Silence. “Because the thing that cheated on that human is now an underground god. Now it requires the seventh SOUL to complete itself.”

He glanced at the scientist; the other monster still sat, feet under him.

“Don’t worry. Even if you helped the human, nothing’d really change. Toriel dies, the creature destroys her SOUL, so on. We’re the least needed ones for _it_ because we’re abnormal; we’re different from other monsters. We’re able to see how _it_ ’s mocking the world, so _it_ threw us down here. Apart from everyone else.”

Watching solely Papyrus and his own shoes before that, the doctor tried to look around. This place reminded him of the Last Corridor before the throne room that was also lit by sun; but here, the sunlight spots only shined upon the two monsters and small parts of columns. Other than that, it was complete coldest darkness. _“Just like the void”_ , he thought.

“You’re right”, Papyrus waved a hand, as if reading his mind, “this is the void. Take a closer look.”

Still not entirely trusting him, Gaster obeyed. Then a hole in the darkness emerged to the left from him. On the white matter, as on a TV screen, various figures and colorful spots started appearing; they ran, scurried and shuffled around. Gaster recognized the scene: two skeleton kids by the starry cave, and one of them turned to him, calling him “dad”... Now he saw the third figure – a tall monster in a black coat, crooked like an old woman but with a slightly wry smile on his pale face.

_“That... that’s...”_

“Yep. Must’ve seen yourself”, the skeleton hemmed, turning to the vision too.

“They call him... _me..._ their dad”, the doctor said in an unsteady voice. “It’s like... I’ve already...”

“ _Seen this?_ That’s right, you have. I have too. Remember what I said about the Determination melting me? As I stayed in the temporal circle, I’ve seen all this multiple times. Somewhere, the kid carried a yellow flower on their shoulder; somewhere me and Sans were your kids; somewhere we’ve all been humans instead of monsters. You looked fancy, by the way, if that were you. Nice hairstyle.”

Gaster smirked, turning away from the white hollowness. Somewhere behind Papyrus another hole shined, showing a barely visible face of a girl around twenty years old, strangely familiar; her red-brown eyes stood out in the blush but her smile overshadowed everything else. Noticing the way he looked through him, the skeleton turned around.

“Oh, that’s my favorite version. Dreemurrs’ kids didn’t die in that one, and all the children who fell down here stayed alive. Including the seventh SOUL. Strange however, the first human looks somewhat... _different._ Something’s off.”

“It’s Chara”, the scientist mumbled, staring at the face spot. “She’s the seventh human _here_ , not where I came from. The first one there, respectively.”

“By the way... About the _‘where I came from’_ thing.”

Cuddling his knees before, Papyrus straightened up and outstretched his legs.

“The further you went and approached the queen, the better we remembered you. Not only me but everyone else. You noticed that as well. What about you, do _you_ remember what’s happened to you?”

The question was supposed to be rhetorical, but the doctor opened his mouth to answer and was cut off.

“I bet there are only local memories in your head now. Because it’s your home.”

“It’s not my home”, Gaster protested weakly. “Not my life.”

“Really? What about all the stuff playing in your head? From whose side did you watch them?”

“From... mine, but... I didn’t feel like being in my body. **It wasn’t me.** ”

Papyrus frowned and averted his gaze, crossing his hands. Few minutes later he went on talking, and his tone transformed into a flat and indifferent one.

“I’ve seen you many times. In every single timeline you were to meet me. Permanently. But never had you got a SOUL. Later I concluded that it was the result of your experiment. You were right in your notes writing that it was gonna shift timelines. It did. You suffered the same fate in all the cases. And by dying in your timeline you caused your death in all other version. That’s it.”

“It’s... _one theory”_ , Gaster observed but didn’t argue.

“I know. But the further it went, the more I understood I was right. Then, while watching your assistants, I found out their fate became fixed as well. But I mentioned that already.”

He fell silent for a while, as if gathering himself for something grand.

“Now. Don’t interrupt me, okay? At all. Got it?”

“Got it”, the scientist nodded like a bobble head doll, puzzled by all the info.

“Good. Then, as I got thrown away from the circle, I tried researching that myself. Tried a lot of ways, a frigging lot. From all the ways I got into there was only one I never counted on because... It was _too unusual._ Unbelievable. You, a monster with no SOUL, lived for quite a while and didn’t even think about being SOULless. What kept you alive? A power strong enough, one that would compare to the power of Determination. Where could the SOUL go then? I assumed in despair that it was lost among the alternative timelines. If you’d shifted them, being the very center of the accident, it’s only logical to assume that your SOUL moved somewhere... Unknown.”

“But wh—“

“ _Don’t interrupt_. In the end, as the machine is no longer working, I couldn’t check that anyhow, only believe. The point is, Determination has moved your SOUL and locating it will probably put everything back to place. But that’s very, very ambitious, way more ambitious than all my previous theories. That’s all”, the skeleton put his hands together humbly, “you can now ask me anything.”

“What if it’s at the same place?”, Gaster almost exclaimed. “In my timeline?”

“I said that I _don’t know_. It could be anywhere. But that’s the only theory I haven’t checked. Considering all others failed... Do what you must.”

The sudden realization of everything at once, heavy and viscous, fell on his shoulders. He stood up slowly, leaning against a pillar, and stared into the void around him. It didn’t shine with white spots anymore, didn't spit out random pictures; instead of that, he saw a girl in a yellow-green sweater who threw aside her knife, and in front of her lay a cat-like creature, the one who attacked him long ago in the Ruins. The creature looked beaten up, but it was still smirking and telling Chara something illegible. Gaster couldn’t make out a single word.

“Oh look, they’re almost finished. We’re gonna drift away from here soon”, Papyrus observed dully and got up too, straightening his brown shorts. The older brother rushed at him and grabbed his shoulders: all in one moment.

“Papyrus, wait”, he whispered hoarsely. “ _I had a SOUL_. An image of it. As I only appeared down here, back in the Ruins. But as I followed the way here, as I was being thrown here and there, it disappeared slowly. Almost gone now. Where could it come from?”

The skeleton shrugged off the holed hands from his shoulders.

“Perhaps that’s those who knew you back then. In previous life, one could say. They could slowly forget you because you were here, and now your... _SOUL image_ weakened. Maybe. I can’t say for sure.”

“Damn it, Papyrus, you... You’re a hundred times smarter than me. No, a **thousand** times!”, the monster yelled, feeling his vision getting weaker, and his surroundings blurring; his left eye, shattered down his face, suddenly came back with a dull barely noticeable pain.

The monster in a hoodie smiled wearily at him – all he could do in the end.

“Good luck out there, brother.”

* * *

He hasn’t seen anything this time. No visions, hands or alien bodies. The time skip tossed him exactly at the moment he saw the human for the last time – the final frontier. And Chara stood in front of him, safe and sound, but only on the outside. She grabbed his sleeve and pulled him back into the throne room, not stopping until she led him to the room’s center.

“You were right”, she said, astonishing him.

“What?”

“You said once that I’m going to have a hard time. That’s true.”

“Chara, are you... alright?”

“A couple of minutes ago it was downright _disastrous_ ”, she confessed. “It’s all better now. But...”

“Yes?”

“That creature... _Temmie_. It told me to go back and talk to Undyne. As if I don’t know her good enough. Then it’ll give me a happy ending.”

“Do you trust it?”, Gaster frowned.

“I have to”, she shrugged. “That’s why we return to Hotland.”

_“We?”_

Ready to leave, Chara turned to face him.

“If you don’t want to join me, I’m not making you. Or have you already solved all your problems while I was away?”

“Chara, I...”

“Don’t start. I have no idea why you needed my SOUL, but you’re not gonna get it that easy. _I promise_.”

The doctor waited for a grimace on her face, but she smiled at him – just as wearily and calmly as Papyrus did a while ago.

“Come along, Dings. We’re short on time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUs mentioned by Papyrus:  
> \- 'Dadster' (can't really call that an AU in common sense but my fics feature them all as brothers... so yeah)  
> \- a glimmer of Underfell  
> \- Humantale (more like a reference to my humanizaed version of Gaster, e.g. here: http://vk.cc/58WgAr)  
> \- an AU where Chara and Asriel didn't die, Asriel became the king later and all humans who fell to the underground lived peacefully with monsters (that was a tumblr post and I've lost it as soon as I've seen it, sadly)


	10. Where I begin

During those few hours Chara wasted on returning to Snowdin with a phone call, letter delivery, a ‘date’ with Undyne at the garbage dump and return to the lab, a horrifying lot of things have happened. For Chara herself, of course. Gaster didn’t follow her every single step, waiting behind the corner or at the Riverperson. Only at the lab, as they saw a note, he advanced and read the note himself.

“Mmh. I see”, he mumbled, then gave the note to his friend. She was reading the scribbling for a longer time, disbelieving the words it said.

“We have to hurry”, she concluded, folding the paper in four and pocketing it. “She could already get into trouble...”

They both heard a whistling metallic sound. A black rectangle opened in a wall – the one Undyne left at their first meeting. So-called bathroom door was now something absolutely different.

“Well... let’s go?”, Chara suggested timidly, staring into darkness behind the door.

Gaster knew what resided under the lab. He knew where the door led, and that the elevator behind it had a terrible working rate. But the girl didn’t have to know about that at all.

“Let’s go.”

He gave her a hand, and she grabbed his long fingers with her small palm. They entered the elevator together.

* * *

Another elevator failure wasn’t a surprise for the monster but scared Chara big time. When the booth started shaking and thundering like a tremendous beast, the kid gripped Gaster’s coat and held it so desperately that she almost put him down. She yelped something, but the doctor couldn’t hear her behind all the noise; he could only grab Chara before the end of fall.

Seemed that as the booth reached the final point, some sort of limiter snapped, because the fall ended sharply, jolting Gaster with the little human. Everything suddenly went silent inside, as if the sound sources were cut off; the light failure started at the top, then it went off entirely. Only as the elevator opened, letting in another semidarkness source, the monster-human ball moved. Chara was so frightened her hands went white from gripping the scientist’s coat; Wingdings was sure his protection magic saved them from crashing, though he didn’t notice if he used it or not.

“Chara”, he whispered as quiet as possible, “we’ve arrived. Can you walk?”

She nodded, still trembling but detaching herself from his coat. The doctor peeked outside: nobody to be seen, only inactive screens on the endless dark-green walls drowned in darkness. Somewhere in the distance a door opened, shuffling; Chara looked at the monster with a question but he couldn’t answer.

“We go. If we’re invited, we go.”

Her gaze into the darkness couldn’t be called calm at all. But the red light, still burning in her chest, assured Gaster somehow. How could she stay determined and keep going, although being a child.

Chara managed to do that.

* * *

The lab surroundings have changed. Lights were brought to minimum, dimly illuminating green wall tiles; real flowers were replaced with fake plastic ones. A fast-food vending machine stood alone in a corner and on the right there was a door with four colored keys. None were active. In this place, Chara didn’t wander off, holding onto her elder friend, almost physically.

“Turn left”, Gaster muttered on the end of observing.

“Left? What’s there?”

“We’ll see. It’s the only way to go so far.”

The girl grabbed his hand. In silence, they passed by several screens that came alive as they approached; from some of them, they found out that the willpower that keeps human SOULs together after death was called Determination by someone from this place. Chara remembered silently how monsters advised her to stay determined, and so did Gaster, but way before them all. Could that mean anything? Hell knows.

The left wing, too, was dark and unwelcoming. Shreds of fog hung in the air; sometimes it felt like a thick cold substance poured from vents above, resembling diluted blood. At northern wall, there were three operating tables, covered with slick liquid. The monster touched one of them and shook his hand in a squeamish way. The human went further and peeked at the next room.

“Dings? There is a note. _‘Dropped’, ‘sink’_... What’s that?”

Gaster turned round the corner and saw Chara with a paper in her hands. There was a device next to her, a faintly familiar one.

“I don’t know. But this is the main power unit. We used to disable them to prevent unwanted visitors.”

“That means we’re not really welcome here”, she concluded and put the note back at its place.

“Can’t say so. I think we’re just a couple of steps ahead of someone.”

Lost in her thoughts, the girl wandered back. Then, on her right, she noticed a row of sinks, something she missed in the dark. _‘Dropped in sink’_... She thought that she’d find something important, something that would’ve have an impact on the power unit; reaching out for the water taps, she turned two of them, and clear water ran down the ceramics. But as she turned the third one, something white and opaque streamed down from it and smiled at her – and then it foamed, rioted and hopped out of the sink. Chara yelped and jumped back, not entering the fight; moving back, she found the doorway and ran into the red unit room where Gaster remained. Stumbling at the doorstep, the girl fell onto the monster and clutched him with unsteady hands.

“Chara, _Chara_ , what’s happened? Why did you scream?”

“T-there was a... a _thing_ ”, the human pressed out, tightening her grip. “It came out of a sink...”

“It?” The doctor frowned. “Okay. Let’s have a look.”

**“No!”**

As he made a step, Chara grabbed his leg, as an infant reaching out for a parent.

“Don’t... _don’t go.”_

“There’s nowhere else to go anyway. Only this door.”

Still having a child on his right leg, he made it out; he noticed some white substance hissing in a corner where the sinks used to be. Now the creature covered them. In the end, Gaster didn’t really remember anything related to amalgamates, so he was surprised – and even thrilled – along with Chara.

“So _this_ came out of a sink”, he whispered with disbelief. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. Come on”, she pulled his leg, but the scientist didn’t move an inch.

“Wait. I read the whole note. _‘Dropped the key in a sink yesterday, dunno how to fetch it’_. What if we ask this thing to pull out the key for us?”

“What?”, the girl whispered with horror in her voice. “Let’s go, don’t do that, please don’t...”

“Nowhere else to go”, he hissed. “Only one way.”

Shaking the human off, he stepped forward. The creature also moved towards him.

“Dings, wait!”, Chara screamed and darted forward.

Just as the monster came close enough, they both fell into a fight. The substance divided itself into three creatures that resembled wicked living beings – some sort of rats with their ribs sticking outside... Anyway, no one had any wish to continue comparing them with anything. They were horrified enough.

“Chara... is that your phone?”

With an astonished expression, she pulled the phone out of her pocket and then heard what her friend’s non-existent ears heard. Muted voices came out of the loudspeaker, interrupting one another. _“Come join the fun”_ , they muttered with static voices, stuck at one sound.

“Dings... they...”

 _“Give it to me!”_ Gaster yanked the phone from her hands, put it to his mouth and said slowly and steadily: _“Never. **Ever**.”_

Strangely enough, it worked its best: the creatures mumbled something about being sad and disappeared in the darkness. Only then the doctor sighed with relief.

“Okay, that was an unexpected outcome”, he muttered, returning the phone to Chara. His gaze fell upon something red in the sink with no water. “There’s the key. I told you it was a good idea.”

Although it all ended well, it didn’t affect Chara in a good way. She was still shaking, even when her SOUL escaped the fight, and she could make herself take a single step. Then, as Gaster entered the power unit room and returned without the key, the human was turning the water taps back to their original state.

“It was the right key. Come along, the eastern section should be open now.” The monster turned to leave, but didn’t hear Chara follow and looked back. She still stood at the sinks, drilling them with her gaze; Gaster sighed, approached her and kneeled before her. “Chara. Are you alright?”

 _“Alright?”_ She glared at him as if slashing him with a knife. “Weren’t YOU scared, Dings? This creature didn’t look like any monster! This wasn’t one, this was... this...”

She grabbed the sink, facing away from the scientist, ready to cry. The horror that entangled her from the beginning was almost at its final point.

Having got two younger brothers, Wingdings wasn’t good with kids, to his shame. Papyrus was adult enough when they’ve lost their mother, so they didn’t have a lot of problems. Now, seeing Chara at the brink, he dind’t really know if he was capable of calming her.

The strained silence resolved all of sudden. The human looked at him with eyes full of tears and hugged him, burying herself in his thick black coat. Not coming up with a better solution, Gaster put his hand on her back, remembering that Chara must’ve been around twelve years old. But one could be scared of beasts anytime. Monsters, for instance, were afraid of humans during all time.

Not having received an answer from the girl, the monster picked her up carefully, stood up and made his way to the eastern section. Along with it, he reflected on the incident and tried to imagine the reason for this to happen. Chara was right: _there was not monster like this one_. Even with his damaged memory and mind Gaster was sure about that. Well, he only hoped that this encounter would be the first and last one. For the child who sobbed uncontrollably in his embrace.

* * *

One hour passed, and doctor Gaster concluded that life in this laboratory was not that bad after all.

The vending machine was still there, so you won’t die of hunger – only of epigastric burning. In the eastern wing, something like a bedroom was also placed: a dozen of beds, neatly done and covered with dust. At one of them, the monster put down Chara; as he walked towards the section peacefully, she fell silent and then asleep. At the end, she survived a battle with Toriel, won over Temmie who absorbed six human SOULs; now these ghost monsters... She was still a human, a very young one.

Here, in this improvised bedroom, Gaster saw another ghost. Sometime after he put Chara to sleep, a tall white silhouette appeared before her, also not resembling any monster. The doctor watched in silence how the figure reached out for the kid, froze for a second – and then covered her with a blanket. Still speechless, he watched it stroke her on the head and disappear; during all the scene, even though he didn’t want to admit that, he was simply scared to move. Now he began to understand Chara, frozen with fear back then.

The human was peacefully asleep, sighing sometimes; so Gaster decided to leave her and have a look around. His first turn was the eastern mirror corridor from where he could still see Chara’s bed. In front of mirrors, long tables stood all along the wall; taking a closer look, the doctor recognized the stuff on them to be soft toys. He took one of them and observed it under a light; white fur and yellow-blue sweater... The toy looked incredibly like Temmie. Behind Gaster, a screen came alive; reading this entry, he found out that the toys were used to be a carrier for Determination that wouldn’t be human or monster. A nice move, he thought, although a risky one.

In the same corridor, the doctor met the third weird creature. It took him by surprise: the scientist didn’t realize at first that there was someone else’s reflection in the mirror beside his own. Gaster avoided a fight: for some reason, the creature wasn’t interested in him, and he could go down the corridor where he found a blue power unit. While the creature was unaware about Chara’s presence, he hurried back; but he didn’t find the creature to be at the same place when he returned.

He spent ninety minutes on an unoccupied bed, completely destroying its neat appearance but failing to fall asleep. He just couldn’t close his eyes for an unknown reason. He also found a yellow key under the blanket, probably put there by someone in a hurry. Of course, sitting at one place when he was insomniac didn’t satisfy him; so after half an hour he was wandering around the north-eastern part of the lab which remained uninspected. Thick fog hung in the air, and he didn’t approach the far right room, instead getting closer to someone huge hanging on the ceiling.

 _“DT Extraction Machine”_ , he muttered, glancing at the screen. The device was something infernal that resembled both the unhappy monster that was ‘decorated’ by other monsters and... And what else? Some muddy memories itched, swarmed at the back of his mind but they didn’t want to be expressed. Anyway, the machine wasn’t working, as the sigh read; the scientist didn’t spend any more time on it and proceeded.

He remembered this place. It usually contained old records and reports, and he was usually the only person to visit it. The yellow power unit hit him, and after the yellow key disappeared in the unit, it beamed brighter, and the doctor saw the rest of his surroundings. Right in the middle, a video player stood, and right behind him there was a cupboard full of tapes, all in order and carefully titled. Everything was covered with a thick layer of dust, as if no one had visited this place for a long time. Gaster pulled out the first tape with a half-erased date and took off the cardboard box.

There was nothing peculiar about it, a usual video tape. Then he inserted it into the player; the machine rattled, swallowing a black box, and an image appeared on screen. At first there was nothing, but then the author of videos must’ve turned on the light, hitting Gaster’s eyes. But then the equipment slowly came back to normal, focusing on one object: the monster in the center of video frame. The doctor’s hands trembled, and the videotape cover fell down.

 

From the TV screen, his own face stared at him, though lacking a crack under the left eye.

The monster on tape coughed, turned around one last time and returned to the camera.

 _“Hello”_ , the voice hissed a bit, and interference tainted the screen. _“Can’t say I’m happy that you’re watching this. But if you are... we’re both in deep trouble.”_

Gaster didn’t notice that he kneeled in front of the TV. It was unusual to watch himself on a record; he rarely watched the tapes he appeared on. The picture jumped, and the scene changed: it was the same monster but in different time and location. He sounded less wearily than on the previous part and looked better overall.

_“Yesterday I found out that I... have been SOULless for a while already. Horrific thing to imagine. Monsters consist mostly of their SOULs while I lack one. Doesn’t matter how I lived without it or how I found it out... Really doesn’t matter.”_

A moment of blue screen, as if the recording jumped through an empty slot.

 _“Today Paps was there. Rummaging through my equipment for some reason. And I was already gone”._ Three pieces of something resembling plaster were placed on the crack above his right eye. _“Whatever he was trying to find, he mustn’t use it in any case. Though... he may use it once, not anymore. Cut it.”_

Sharp change of scene: darkened room, a reading lamp shining upon the monster’s face in an uncomfortable angle.

 _“Dear diary, I’m screwed”_. He held his head; whitish smoke from his left eye streamed through his crooked fingers. _“I know what I have to do but I have no idea if that will work. I’m so afraid of failing. Really, everything and nothing depends on that. Nothing depends on me. Yet everything does. Anything to keep me sane?”_

Tearing awkward sounds; the image tore itself and changed into a new one. The monster in it sat his back to the camera, and in front of him endless papers and screens nested, each having not less than a block of text.

 _“I found you. **Very you** , yes. It all depends on you now. I know you’re there. Watching all this go. **Here it lies** , your being. Floating on the water surface. On the timeline. Look."_ He grabbed the camera and brought it up to the screens; one of them showed strings of numbers, letters and symbols of Gaster’s own alphabet. _“Here it is. Watch, absorb it. Remember. Here you are, the **whole you** , just a bunch of data. Funny now, isn’t it? You, me, each and every one of us are just a string of code. A **very** long string.”_

He laughed sharply, and the recording broke off, switching to a blue screen for a few moments. The scientist wanted to change the tape already, but then something moved in the player, returning the picture. The lighting there was so faint that the only light source bright enough was the monster’s white eye.

_“Yes. Yes, one can’t fail. Look. I’ve set it all up. I know exactly when and where it’s all going to happen. I won’t let you escape; you’ll have to get here. I won’t let you get anywhere else, **you hear**? It’s your only task, your mission if you want. Now.”_

Interference meddled, but ended quickly.

 _“If you’re here, it’s all going well. Find her. The scientist. Find Undyne, make her show you my chamber in the lab. Your chamber. She knows where it is. Make her. She’ll be surprised, maybe frightened. It’s Undyne. **Make. Her.** "_ Papers rustled. _“Everything is out there. There, there I wrote everything down, there’s... A way out.”_

A low sound muffled his voice for a couple of seconds; even Gaster’s head went buzzing.

_“I’m the chosen one, you know? I saw them **all** and only **I** was able to think into it. The two of us are gonna save what’s left from their timelines and us. Yes, yes, if we’re lucky, we’ll save ourselves as well. Great, right? Only if you’ll cooperate.”_

He fell silent, his fast glass-like voice ended. Absolute silence for a while, only the statics interfered.

_“And you **will** work. You want to live. You wanna return to them. Return to **him**. And I don’t want to lose **her**. Trust me. I am a madman, oh yes. Going insane from something that’s only gonna work in one chance for a million. But tell me: don’t I have the right to hope for the best? Even if it made me go insane.”_

The scene switched to blackness, where a single white-blue screen shined.

_“This is a curse. The ability to see all this. I lack a SOUL, and I can see everything time after time. Please help me. I’m gonna burn out soon. Like a flare. Then **you** ’re gonna replace me. Come as you are and leave in peace, bringing it to everyone.”_

Statics again. And the voice returned for one last phrase, unbelievably sharp and ice cold.

_“But if you do anything to **her** ,I’ll rise from the dead, break all laws of this timeline and kill you myself.”_

* * *

Something clicked in the tape recorder, and the screen died – finally. Not bringing himself to move, Gaster sat on his knees in front of the TV, trying to put everything to places, as the whirlwind of thoughts was raging in his head. Lost in them, he heard nothing and flinched when a warm little palm touched his shoulder.

“Dings... that was _you_ on the video, wasn’t it?”

He was afraid to turn around. He knew it was the human who must’ve woken up some time ago and looked for him. A fear of something unknown entangled him; that’s why Chara went around and faced him.

“ _Dings_. Why did you record tapes for yourself? Why do you have to leave in peace?” He dind’t respond, and the girl grabbed his wrist; her hand was almost enough to enfold it. “Maybe it’s time to tell me?.. _What’s_ going on with you?”

Gaster took a deep breath. Then he looked at the child in a green sweater. Was it worth it? Was it necessary for her to know all this?..

“Dings?”

He finally tore himself away from the screen, turned away and moved aside. In human’s chest, a faint red glimmer glowed; she must’ve met those creatures again... But she wasn’t crying and running away.

“He... _you_ said that you’re SOULless. Do you really have no SOUL?” A single nod. “Then you’re... same as Temmie?”

“Heh. In my condition being Temmie is a happy dream”, the scientist smiled at her sadly. “You see, this is... very complicated. You won’t believe me.”

“ _Of course I won’t believe you_ ”, Chara mumbled angrily. “I had to stop believing you from the point you took my SOUL. But I’m still listening to you for some reason, huh?”

“Yes... correct.” His spirit uplifted somehow, and he straightened up. “Alright. To be short, that monster from recording is not me. I mean, that’s me, but... Me that should’ve been here in normal condition. And my home is another place, another timeline. I got here after dying back there. Now I’m being shifted between timelines, and I’ve even been to my own timeline, but... I have no idea how to get out of this.”

“What is your full name?”

“What?” The monster was surprised by this question. “Ah, the name... Wingdings Gaster. _Wing_ -dings.”

“Doctor Dings Gaster”, the child said and chuckled for some reason. “You know, despite your weird story... You seem like a good monster to me. Do you want to come home?”

“ _Do I?.._ I’m not sure anymore.”

“I’m sure you want. I want too. Remember what you told me? Back in Ruins. When I didn’t know whether I should go or stay.”

“To stay determined?” the monster asked unsteadily, not really understanding what she’s onto. The girl smiled.

“That’s it. And you’re almost determined as me. You just need to aim for your target. You need to get home and I need to get home. That Gaster said you need to look for the scientist. Find _her_. That’s Undyne, right?”

The monster nodded. Little hands pulled his wrist, making him stand up.

“Then we need to find her. Come with me, I’ve already put all keys in place. That closed door at the entrance must be open now.”

* * *

“Hey, w-wait!”

A shout drew the creatures’ attention just in time: they almost got the human who reached the control panel. Stumbling and losing her breath, the scientist ran into the control room, pulled out a pack of chips and waved it at the creatures.

“Here, I brought you some food! There, there, good amalgamates... good. Head for exit now.”

The amalgamates crawled away from Chara; then Undyne approached her, shoving her hands deep into labcoat pockets.

“S-sorry for all this... I saw the power went off so I hurried here... But you seemed to be one step ahead of me all the time.” She giggled awkwardly but it didn’t fix the situation. “This all must’ve been a huge misunderstanding for you. I’ll explain everything. As you might know, I—“

“Wait.” The girl raised her hand, and the scientist fell silent, and then turned around timidly: behind her stood doctor Gaster, more serious than ever.

“Aha, doctor!” She tried to look cheerful, but he interrupted her.

“Undyne. Is my section still operating?”

“Y-yes, sure... but it’s locked”, Undyne smiled nervously. “D-do you need an escort?”

“Yes, please.”

The fishy scientist glanced at the human who still stood at the control panel; Chara waved her hand like, “do whatever’s on your mind, I’ll be here on my own”. With a heavy heart Undyne turned round the corner, leading her former scientific director.

“It’s not far from here... D-did you get down here only for this? You could’ve asked f-for this up there...”

“It wasn’t necessary before”, the doctor cut off.

Up until the section entrance they kept silence. Undyne spent some time on the locks, switches and airlock codes; finally, the doors opened with a loud clang. The room resembled the one that most of Gaster’s video tapes were recorded in. But there were no screens: Undyne must’ve moved all electronics to the lab, leaving behind only piles of paper, locked inside tall shelves. One of them was signed with red paint, and Gaster went to check it.

“I touched nothing here”, the lab owner’s voice came from behind him. “Well... almost nothing. But I’ve only moved some papers from here to there. And read nothing!”

“And this shelf, did you touch it?”

“I d-don’t think so... I can’t remember.”

The doctor hemmed and reached out for the first folder. The pages were sewn together, but some of them were torn away in a hurry: paper rags suggested that. There were three folders, and each had some pages missing; most of them – in the second one where the writings switched to most hurrying and unsteady handwriting, up to the point where one would tilt the paper to read it.

“What did he want from me...” Gaster muttered, shuffling the papers. Undyne stood a bit away but listened to him.

“Who is _he?”_

“Doesn’t matter.” He slammed the third folder shut and started thinking. He found nothing super important that would’ve changed his current life. Most writings could only just explain Gaster’s ravings from scientific point of view. He did everything: he found Undyne, he demanded an entrance to his section...

“Undyne”, he suddenly said, “did you really touch nothing?”

“Well actually... I’ve moved something, yes.”

“ _Moved?!_ Where?”

“T-to my archive.” The scientist looked somewhat hurt, looking at him even more confident than necessary.

“ _Why?!_ That’s my property, you know?”

“You were dead!” she cried in response. “And the things written there... they _scared_ me. Would the Queen see this, and I’d be dead where I stand.”

“ _You_...” and there it hit him. “That’s why... there’s so many toys.”

“Yep. You wrote about distant future. Well, distant as when... When I became the Royal Scientist. And you, you’ve described everything so perfectly that I... became frightened. Really.”

“Undyne”, his voice tone switched to ominous, “why Temmie?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I needed a vessel for Determination, so I took a toy from Queen’s Throne Room. She didn’t notice, and I thought it’s alright. Then the toy disappeared... everything went straight to hell back then.”

“You’ve sent the folder to your archive, you say?” The scientist nodded like a hunted animal. “Then bring it here! Now!”

Watching Undyne running away, Gaster still clutched folder number three in his hands, and thought swarmed in his battered mind.

 _“Whoever you were here, doctor Gaster”_ , he thought, _“I won’t let you down. You’ll see.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gaster being crazy about his work is my favourite kinklike headcanon


	11. Come home, my lamb

_Portable personal log, codename: [not set]_

_Date: [not set]_

 

What’s this thing? Never saw it before. And this butto-

...

-derstand, that’s all! Something’s chirping... Maybe that’s a recording maching?  Of course! He said he has this sort of stuff at work. Dunno why they need to record anything but that’s cool.

What’s the codename? Is that a super-secret name to cipher your notes? Nice! Okay, how does one set it up...

Here!

 **_[Codename <_ ** _The Great Sans >_ **_is invalid. Format error]_ **

Gah... darn you! I know I’m great. No name needed. What could they record here... Some important stuff maybe?

Oh, I know! I’ll ask Undyne, she’ll be sure to know!

 

_Date: [not set] (addition)_

 

Undyne says she doesn’t have anything like this. Okay! I’ll record everything important here.

For instance – for instance! I met an unusual monster yesterday. He looked like a toy – those that are usually sold in the capital at holidays. White ones in yellow-blue shirts. But he was _alive_ , he talked to me! We’ve surely become best friends.

Huh! Paps is back I think. I can ask him about... _nooo_. He’ll take it away from me. Won’t tell him anything.

The Great Sans will have – he-he – **SECRETS.**

* * *

All the time Gaster spent on chasing her here and there, the human in striped shirt remained in the control room. She sat there, cuddling her knees and leaning onto the panel that was surely covering some important mechanisms. She thought over what she was going to do. The foul SOULless creature could’ve played a joke on her by advising to visit Undyne. Now she’ll come back to the elevator, come up to the laboratory, and then what? Back to Toriel, back to fighting? Chara didn’t want to hurt anyone – she just wanted everyone to be okay.

When half an hour passed, the girl became worried and got out of her asylum. The corridors were empty, even amalgamates disappeared; a double-door elevator was seen in the end of corridor. The power income didn’t really help it. She wasn’t worried about Undyne stealing the prince’s favorite toy from Throne Room; that she wasn’t embarrassed by its dusty appearance; that the toy disappeared after her experiments on it. She just wanted to get back.

But fate treated her in a different way.

She stepped into the elevator, but a phone call drew her attention away. She pulled the phone out of her bag, pressed the answer button and froze. The voice in the phone was the one she’s never heard before. It called her Frisk, promised to see her soon, and Chara barely held herself from shouting: _I’m not Frisk, wake up! I don’t want to see anyone!_ But that would probably not affect the voice owner.

“Ch- **Chara!** ”

As she ended the call, in the exit corridor two figures appeared. One of them shouted the human’s name and rushed towards the elevator; on the run, sheets of paper flew out of the folder he clutched. Behind her, the scientist in her long white labcoat could hardly catch up on him: her outline was seen better than the doctor in his black coat.

They didn’t succeed. Half the way, the elevator doors closed, cutting the child off both monsters.

_“Ah hell!”_

Gaster hit the shut doors; stopping there, he banged it with clenched fists and yelled something angry. Undyne was one step behind; as the doctor cried out different incoherent curses, she gathered the papers he lost on the run. When the scientist approached him, his momentary flash of anger was already over; then she handed him the papers.

“Thanks”, he muttered while fitting wrinkled papers back into his folder. “D... damn. Does this elevator lead to the place I remember?”

“W-well, yes”, she smiled with a tint of fear. “To the castle. But we haven’t used this elevator for a long time... It’s a miracle that it took off now.”

“Do you want to say... that it may not reach the top?”

“N-no, not at all!” She waved her hands upon seeing his eyesockets widen. “It’ll reach the top but... Maybe in the different part of the castle. Not where the CORE elevator leads.”

Gaster desperately tried to remember where would this elevator shaft end up according to the castle layout. Looked like a mirrored image of previous elevator shaft but... He wasn’t just thinking about this out of nowhere: he planned on teleporting to Chara, but teleportation required knowledge of place where one needed to get. In the end, he just chose any point inside the castle to be closest to Throne Room.

Undyne recoiled as the corridor’s darkness was dissolved for a moment with a flash – and the doctor disappeared.

* * *

_**“Goodbye.”** _

This time his teleportation worked the best it could, moving him about twenty minutes ahead, when the kid was already through the endless grey walls and reached the Barrier. Toriel was still waiting for her there, unfought. Gaster got into beginning on the fight – right in the moment where Chara was supposed to lose the ability to SPARE the queen. He appeared between opponents, covering the girl with his body.

Once again, the Queen of all monsters is astonished and mutely happy at the same time. The doctor would pay her back with the same emotions; he still remembered the _“break all the laws of this timeline and kill you myself”_ words. But right in front of him, a large fireball appeared, ablaze.

Chara yelled something, and a scene reappeared in the monster’s mind: his emergency takeoff from Asgore’s home in Ruins when he launched a fireball at him. He imagined the current fireball to be the same one, but it aimed at the Queen and went straight there.

And then – Gaster couldn’t believe his eyes – _he_ came back.

“What a horrible creature, torturing such a poor, innocent youth... Hello, my child.” A soft somewhat worried voice rolled across the hall, making the scientist shrink and Chara shout with delight:

 _“Asgore!”_   Then she threw herself into his hands. He smiled awkwardly and hugged her tight, ruffling her dark hair.

“What, did you think I would abandon you? Not in the world. I couldn’t stop worrying about you, so I followed you. And I think I’ve just prevented the worst burden in your life. No matter how horrible Toriel is, she deserves MERCY, too.”

Wingdings glanced at the corner where the ruler stood, somewhat battered; her face was still amazedly happy but for a different reason. Could she too have thought her former husband to be dead?..

“Gorey... You’re back!”, she said with a delightful smile. The other boss monster’s cheerful attitude vanished in a moment.

“Do not _‘Gorey’_ me, Dreemurr!” And he went on talking about human casualties, responsibility and so on; even the human moved a bit away from him at that point. The doctor could feel that he’s already heard all that, but he couldn’t remember when exactly. He knew that Asgore would reproach Toriel, and that she would behave like a lamb, agreeing on everything and apologizing. And then, one by one, other monsters would come back, those whom Chara has met on her way here: Alphys, Undyne, skeleton brothers... All these memories flooded back. All but one moment he missed.

The moment he ended up hanging above the ground with something thorny that looked like ivy.

Gaster felt as if waking up from a dream. He hung between Alphys and Asgore, and the thorns dug into his shoulders painfully; and in front of the human it stood again, the insatiable villainous catlike monster who was not actually a monster at the end.

But he didn’t notice one thing at first: caught monsters were not discouraged by that, they all helped the little determined human with all they had. And soon, all monsters of the underground kingdom came here. All monsters were here, safe and well; Chara spared them all and reached out for everyone. And they all got a chance to support the girl, to add some fuel to her Determination’s flame that almost went out after True Lab.

Of course, nobody thought about Temmie’s ability to consume everyone’s SOULs. Gaster felt it himself; but he lacked a SOUL, what was he supposed to... _pay with?_

Something fire hot pierced his chest, like a sizzling hot piece of coal. It hurt; the spasm from this piercing echoed into the empty place where a shadow of his SOUL remained. Then another coal reappeared there. Another one, another two, another dozen; they’ve filled the space between monster’s ribs in seconds. The coal was scorching, burning him from inside and pulling to the ground. But he felt neither ground nor skies anymore.

He remembered the words, bright red, thrown onto the white papers.

_“It’ll gather all SOULs of the underground, that greedy creature. Then the code strings will get together again. If you’ll remain conscious, you’ll be very lucky. You’ll have to hold onto your code. It’ll hurt, it’ll be hard. But there’s no other way out.”_

That burning hot pain in his chest was nothing other than a SOUL. But not his one, not the native piece of hopes and dreams – the one that used to belong to the body he was a guest in.

Perhaps that was true.

In the end, they all remembered doctor Dings Gaster, an ingenious trickster, a mad hermit who was crazy about timelines. Nothing could prevent them from getting him back.

_“In your timeline everything went well. In my timeline it **didn’t**. Your task is to escort your human kid to finale. To victory. Her name is Chara, is it not? Guide Chara until you drop dead. There’s no other purpose for your existence.”_

He felt someone’s little palms clutching him, cold as ice. They pulled him back, and the feeling of fullness and painful weight slowly disappeared and departed from his body. And an old, almost forgotten feeling made him freeze and give up without fighting.

He was going home.

The last thing he saw was a blinding bright light. He didn’t understand what that was – his upcoming limbo or the small human’s Determination, whose fate must’ve depended on Gaster the whole time. Coldness embraced his body, every single square of skin that he didn’t have. Again, and for the last time, his shell turned into a shapeless jellylike substance.

The door into the room opened. Two figures stood at the entrance.

The child held the hooded skeleton’s hand tightly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the finale of 'Black Cape' takes place in the end of this chapter


	12. Cara mia, addio

It was middle of August. The weather was surprisingly warm and dry at the footsteps of Mt Ebott; this region swarmed with monsters’ villages. The second race that was historically equal to humans has crawled out of their prison a short time ago and was still undergoing some problems. But who said living was easy?

Among hundreds of creatures, minding their business in buildings and gardens every day, whispers went here and there. They flied fast and light, like a summer wind; monsters talked about a human who was different from others. A determined one. And only some of them fell silent after seeing the human child among other monsters, even with the Queen by her side. Then they admitted quietly that this human was not so special; that most humans who fell down the mountain resembled Chara; and that there’s no point in praising one single human when so many of them have died before.

But Chara didn’t hear and didn’t listen to those conversations. For her, it was more important that all her friends remained alive. And Asriel, imprisoned inside a toy, will forever remain a long gone prince for monsters, not a sadistic SOULless creature.

 

“It’s getting late. Asgore’s gonna worry.”

It was important for her that she could stay with the monsters. That her so-called family didn’t bother. That the monsters themselves didn’t have questions about her life and where they were supposed to put her. They were only just freed from a centuries long prison, only returning to the truly horrifying world, but they kept the human child.

“That’s nothing. He knows that if I’m with you, I’m safe.”

“True.”

Chara acquired an unusual friend. Though all her monster friends could be called unusual, this one was especially weird. The former Royal Scientist who was practically resurrected from dead, battered by life and almost happy. The girl couldn’t explain that, but it seemed to her that she knew him before while exploring the underground; as if she wasn’t going alone but with company of the thin monster with a scary broken face. But she didn’t really think about that much.

“Dings, did you ever... think about how you chose your path in life?”

Dings did think about it. But Dings had no idea that he has pulled himself from practically the other world. He didn’t just have no idea – he also remembered _none_ of the stuff he did while having a bit of Determination. He had neither the supernatural power he had nor terrible nightmares; instead, he got back his heavy white SOUL every normal monster had.

Dings didn’t remember the monster that appeared here many years after his death. The monster who gathered red writings with trembling hands, who watched the videotapes that did not exist anymore. The said monster didn’t remember that either. Just as he returned back to his timeline and returned his SOUL with the help of human named Frisk – and everything burdensome, tainted and unwanted has erased itself, leaving the monster with a SOUL lying down in his ribcage and a pile of personal problems.

But personal problems were always a part of life. No timeline manipulations would’ve erased this.

Both creatures, sitting on a wooden bench late at night, remember nothing about each other. And that’s good. They discuss human life, Chara’s future profession when she turns seventeen. That’s what friends are supposed to discuss.

Not their previous lives’ nightmares.

Slowly, the reddish sun drowns in scarlet clouds at horizon; it gets cold. They know it’s time to say goodbye, but they can’t force themselves to stop: at the end of your meeting, you always want to talk more just to keep your friend with you. But the time comes, and the girl gets up from the bench and smiles to the monster; she waves her hand, and he returns the gesture. Chara passes by a pond that was all green from sedge growing here.

On the other end of path, Wingdings Gaster sits on the wooden planks and watched the circles on water, in which a reflection of twelve years old boy escapes him. He’s wearing a purple striped shirt.

And Chara sees in the water the same monster with two cracks on his face and white bleak lights deep in his empty eyesockets. He presses a bony finger against his thin mouthline as a goodbye.

 

_Though I cannot see I can hear_

_her_

_smile as she sinks._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the final words are a somewhat altered quote from "Arrival in Nara" by alt-J


End file.
